When it comes to maintaining a strong track record in finding multi-billion barrel discoveries, ExxonMobil says its technology is what allows it to always succeed and emerge on top. In fact, the firm’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Darren Woods said that the operator’s technological advancements are what give it key competitive advantages.
In providing a recent example of this, Woods pointed to ExxonMobil’s proprietary full-wave seismic inversion technology, which helps identify hydrocarbon reservoirs. He said that up to last year, this enabled Exxon to have four of the top 10 exploration discoveries in the world and five out of the six largest oil discoveries.
Further to this, Woods said, “In offshore Guyana, this technology helped us achieve four giant discoveries in 2019, and increased our drilling success rate there to 89%, well above the industry average. The results speak for themselves. The estimated recoverable resource offshore Guyana has now increased to more than 8 billion barrels, about two and half times what we estimated just two years ago.”
Closer to home in the Permian basin where it built an industry-leading position with 1.8 million largely contiguous acres, Woods said that Exxon is also seeing the benefit of coupling its technological advantage with large scale developments. He said that this has helped to reduce costs and maximize resource recovery, thereby giving the company a significant industry advantage.
