What’s the future of Geoscience in Exxon?
25 replies (most recent on top)
All the wells that we drilled had to be whatever the geniuses at the top “liked”, not what the technical people recommended. The most egregious example is Brazil.
We used to have explorationists perfectly able to find new things but their voices could never be heard. The STCs, Chiefs and area managers would allow to show to the VPs and higher only what was “guaranteed” to be “liked”. Hence the infamous “periscopes”, where a half-baked opportunity was shown to the higher-ups because it was a perfect fit for their biases and very limited knowledge, then the opportunity would magically jump to the top, exactly like a useless, untalented HiPo who got sponsored by a top manager.
That’s why EMEC’s by-the-bit record was abysmal. Now we might as well get somebody from ENI - chances are it would be a former EM geoscientist who wanted to actually do some exploration and moved away from the farce that EMEC was (it’s even worse now).
Thru the bit hasn't worked well either- $2B and 10 dry holes straight in a row from 2009-2011 shows we can't do exploration either. The real solution is to go hire external oil finders both management and technical. Know anyone from ENI looking for a real challenge?
@2rcr+1f9sUTtc
For the last three decades, Exxon and then EM have gone with the strategy of buying companies, getting discovered undeveloped assets or trying to get the leftover acreage after somebody else makes a discovery.
This strategy hasn’t worked at least since the merger, instead we had to make horrible deals like buying XTO for gas or getting into Canada tar sands, to hide the simple fact that this business model is bankrupt.
Today this model is outright ridiculous. After eight years of massive underinvestment, who has nice DUs to sell, especially of Tgood quality? While we’re making money due to the high oil price, expect more billions to be sunk in absurd off the shelf “opportunities”.
Then we can blame Geoscience again and cut them further. By the time the next downturn comes, our upstream portfolio will need an even higher break even price, Guyana notwithstanding.
Dallas plans to buy the oil and gas it needs through acquisition of discovered undeveloped resource found by others. That is why JRA was selected. Don't forget he was president of EMUV for awhile.
JRA will make Exploration Great Again!
It’s ironic, but Exploration in EM has been so poorly run in the last decades that it did not find anything significant except for Guyana, although it burned through huge amonts of money.
This abysmal record of finding new oil has led a vast majority of non-geoscientists in EM to have a completely distorted but sadly understandable view of Geoscience in general as useless and wasteful. This view is reinforced by Geoscience being now totally out of favor in the corporation.
What’s completely ignored here is where is EM going to get the oil and gas it needs to produce. Is EM going to become a downstream only company? Do you want to believe the green fairy tale of decarbonization by 2030 or some other date that’s not in the hypothetical future?
That’s fine, maybe EM will suddenly say no to making wads of money, but I wouldn’t bet on it. More likely, in the next few years, after the oil price goes above $100, they will do what they always do, through big bucks at fixing what they have themselves broken. And all those forecasting now the demise of finding new oil will say: “I knew it, I’ve always said it’s going to come back”.
Just go look at The Economist articles in 1998. The price of oil was $5/barrel and they were arguing about it staying like that forever - oil will be just a commodity. “Predicting things is difficult, especially in the future”.
When even the Chiefs are jumping ship, there is nothing left to suck. The t-t is dry.
Geoscience will pad the bottom of the PIP totem pole until there are few enough to just oversee the horrendous job done oversees.
I pin the responsibility of this disaster squarely on the eVP and his egomaniac way to “lead”.
LCS will only take cheerleaders and green washers. So true believers and manager types will have refuge for a couple of years, until that charade also falls through.
Geoscience isn’t more than a superfluous support function that isn’t even required for most of the operations.
They figured out they can pretend to do subsurface work, without the very expensive and unreliable geos.
LCS is not about CCS. Moreover, CCS will never make money itself. CCS is the means for the industry to prolong the use of crude and coal and natural gas. Think of it as desulfurization. The final consumer will bear the cost of the crude products with an additional processing cost.
LCS is now evident that it is about low carbon fuels (some through CCS).
@1jrt+1f9sUTtc nobody knows.
But it's already a dedicated business, so lots of opportunities for the usual suspects to climb the slippery pole that is ranking.
An open, honest question: without a carbon tax, or significant tax breaks for carbon sequestration, can anyone explain to me how LCS will ever make any money?
Sounds like whoever's says I will deny that statement is in denial. Long time ago when I first started with the company the old timers told me to follow the money-that tells you the corps priorities. With little to spending on wildcat wells and new ops the writing is on the wall. Dallas no longer prioritizes exploration and does not value geoscience and thus the move to low cost countries for what little work it needs. Glad to chat in five years from BTC and KLTC.
@1mnn+1f9sUTtc
Remember this statement and let’s talk about it in five years. By then you will probably deny you ever said that.
If BTC is the future…then there really is no hope for ExxonMobil. Basically, we’re hiring 3rd tier Indian students (no disrespect to BTC employees) to win the Energy Transition race. How d*mb.
Everything I see points to Guyana as the last producing assest in upstream then becoming a low carbon solution and product solution company.
“Everything points to much reduced geoscience levels.”
Correct. All the way to the point when it becomes obvious to the investors that fossil fuels are not just riding away in the sunset, that there’s a lot of money to still be made and DW or whoever will be there will figure out that they actually need another four or five Guyanas, for real, not just as an empty statement.
BTC is not going to deliver that.
Exploration as it has been in the last 20 years didn’t deliver that.
The joke that is “Exploration” now at EM cannot ever deliver that.
They will have to rebuild Exploration on a sound basis and they will spend a lot of money to find experienced people for it, not the clowns who are left to run it now.
Or they can produce Guyana until it’s over and then turn off the lights. Someone else will find oil, produce it and make a whole lot of money.
Factual observations: we are openly offshoring, the upper level management line is almost entirely engineering, we are on an “up” cycle but aren’t investing in anything new (still paying down debt), one of DW’s first exposures to exploration on his watch was Brazil (probably hasn’t built any credibility with him), and lastly we are still way over staffed with geos given the activity levels. Everything points to much reduced geoscience levels.
In 2006 the move to low cost countries for HR, business support and accounting started and has been going strong ever since. Don't see why geoscience and subsurface work would be different. Even if it doesn't work perfectly management will never admit it.
Ickw-I agree that it is not logical but that is what is going to happen. Just because we don't like the outcome doesn't mean it is d-mb. The plans are in place to move the jobs and PIP the US workers. Geoscience work will be much less in 5 years-with no activity in exploration and capital only being spend on a few assets in upstream production even without KLTC or BTC the number of US geoscience jobs are going down. Truth hurts!
No future as the energy transition will happen quickly and no more exploration is needed. Carbon sequestration work will be done by BTC and KLTC. No geoscience required for biofuels and hydrogen
@1gqb+1f9sUTtc
That’s what the management thinks. Five years from now you’re going to pretend you never said such a d*umb thing. Never happened before in the oil industry, but some consultant sold this snake oil to our supremely inept management.
In five years very few US based geoscience jobs will exist. For better or worse BTC will be doing the work.
BTC is a short term fantasy. This type of move to low cost countries is dreamed up every few years and then fails miserably. Today’s world is highly mobile, top graduate from cheap countries don’t stay there, they study in the US for a higher degree and then work for top international salaries. BTC gets those who are not good enough for that.
Just watch this great “initiative” run into the ground. Let’s talk about it in five years and see how much geoscience (or other things) are done in BTC.
Ridiculous management pipe dream.
BTC for sure. The call for # admin proves it. They don’t want the geoscience people here to discuss how quickly most of them will be PIP’d out of this company.
Do yourselves a favor. Go into data science, or business analytics and GET OUT!!!
There ARE greener pastures out there. Trust me.
BTC
BTC.
The rest are retraining or retiring... except for managers and planners who spend most of their time having coffee meetings with each other.