Next week I have two interviews with competitor companies. Sometimes it seems to me that Exxon is no longer better at anything than our direct competitors. I'm exaggerating, but it's not that far from the truth, is it?
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Leaving toxic O&G to find a job in toxic O&G.
Good luck. It will not hurt to have the address of a mental asylum handy as well.
We're good at leveraging.
It’s not better at competitors (speaking from experience) - just different. If it’s an o&g major like BP, she’ll, or chevron, it’s probably the same. If it’s a US based refiner or midstream you’ll find just as much red-tape but more of a focus and competence to profitability. You’ll also find more duds. People at XOM (like your peers, not mgmt) all work hard and are competent. You’ll probably find 50% of the managment is competent - where here it’s 0%.
We’re good at gold-plating in the name of safety. EMRE costs are well above industry average but no one wants to talk about why that is
In Technology areas, our NPV is "zero" or even "negative" in some cases due to the negative cash flow during the 10 to 20+ years of research and development before a few internal technologies were commercialized. We could have easily bought or licensed third party technology that was equivalent to our research and development and avoided the sunk R&D costs.
Operationally, the Solomon surveys over the last decade have shown that we are at best 2nd or 3rd quartile in most if not all categories. Even our internally staffed turnaround costs in our operating plants are 2 to 3 times greater than the industry average.
Technology wise, XOM is middle of the road but have some structural weakness that I think puts it at an even larger disadvantage down the road. Low pressure hydroprocessing, FCC heavy, high pressure reforming to name a few. Also, anything coming out of technology is 2-3X more expensive.
They just did lazy work over the last 10-15 years. Getting something “technically ready” that was too expensive to deploy and then blaming everyone else for their lack of competence. Annandale has zero accountability and XOM is just lucky to have them…. At least that is what Annandale tells themselves.