Any old timers know why EM is so reluctant to be a player in deepwater GOM?
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History of exploration AND development failures.
You need to understand that XOM is so inefficient as a company that they can’t make money in many places that other companies can. That’s why they buy other companies and have to continue buying other companies. They buy an efficient company and let it operate a few years before implementing XOM policies and then everything starts to go downhill so they have to buy another company. It’s a pretty ridiculous cycle.
Quote I heard years ago was the guy in charge of Upstream, HL, said there was no possibility of commercial hydrocarbons in the Deepwater GoM.
could have had a nice little reentry opportunity with LLOG but missed the boat
After the merger, XOM elected to focus on Qatar, PNG, Gorgon , West Africa, Sak., Kearl, Cold Lake, Hebron versus pursuing small blocks in GOM where XOM was competitively disadvantaged (we did not invest in broad GOM seismic).
Missed out on the big Mississippi Canyon sale in the mid 2000s, which is where Shell took off. Could never lock up continuous acreage over high resource density prospects. Then put out bets on the very deep water trend. Econs became uneconomic and couldn’t compete with global portfolio. Turns out middle basin was the play to be in and we were only shelf or deep water.
It’s called a miss on cyclical strategies
We lost our own backyard to Europe
@OP We also did not believe in the DHI play in the flex trend and missed out.
@a8 I remember the chief and senior principals coming to our section meeting begging for ideas related to deepwater research to be submitted to ignite 2026(jokes on them). XOM research is so messed up. Everyone is expected to follow and repeat the STP even when it’s obviously not going to work, and you can’t speak up. I’m serious, it starts with tagging you as having “bad communication,” and from there you know exactly how it ends.
Goes way, way back to decades ago. Company experts at the time didn’t believe reservoir quality sands were possible in the deep water Gulf. Shell and BP did. We never recovered from that initial misjudgment and the rest is history.
Would mean XOM would have to actually hire a few Americans - F that!