Exxon Mobil : Prepared remarks

PRELIMINARY PREPARED REMARKS

Jennifer Driscoll

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first-quarter earnings call. We appreciate your interest in ExxonMobil. Joining me today are Darren Woods, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Kathy Mikells, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

This presentation and prerecorded remarks were made available on the Investor section of our website earlier this morning, along with our news release. During our analyst call later today, Darren will provide opening comments and reference a few slides from this presentation. That will give us more time for your questions. We expect to conclude the call by about 9:30 a.m. central time.

Let me encourage you to read our cautionary statement which is on slide 2. Please note we provided supplemental information at the end of our earnings slides, which are posted on the website. Now, I'llturn the call over to Darren Woods.

Darren Woods

Good morning, and thanks for joining us today. As we laid out at our most recent Investor Day, our goal is to sustainably grow shareholder value through the execution of our strategic priorities seen on this slide.

As we think about recent events, our job has never been clearer or more important. The need to meetsociety'sevolving needs, reliably and affordably, is what consumers and businesses across the globe are demanding and what we delivered this quarter.

First, we continue to build our competitively advantaged production portfolio, bringing new barrels to market today driven in part by the high-value investments we continued to progress through the pandemic-driven downturn in prices.

A prime example of the benefits of our continued investment is Guyana. This quarter saw the successful startup of Liza Phase 2. Production is ramping up ahead of schedule and is expected to reach capacity of 220,000 barrels of oil per day by the third quarter this year. Combined with Liza Phase 1, it will bring our total production capacity in Guyana to more than 340,000 barrels per day.

Our third project, Payara, is running ahead of schedule with start-up now likely by year-end 2023.

Yellowtail, the fourth and largest project to date on the Stabroek block, received government approval of our development plan, and is on-schedule to start-up in 2025.

Further adding to our portfolio, we have made five new discoveries this year that have increased the estimated recoverable resources to nearly 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels.

Turning to the U.S., we continue to grow production in the Permian Basin. In March, we produced about 560,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day, on pace to deliver a 25% increase versus 2021.

Looking forward, we're alsogrowing our globally diverse portfolio of low-cost, capital-efficient LNG developments.

In Mozambique, the 3.4 million-ton-per-year Coral South floating LNG production vessel is being commissioned after arriving on site in January. Coral South is on budget, with the first LNG cargo expected in the fourth quarter.

In addition to investing in high-value opportunities in our existing businesses, we are also advancing opportunities in our Low Carbon Solutions business.

During the quarter, we announced plans to build a large-scale hydrogen plant in Baytown, Texas. We anticipate the facility will have the capacity to produce up to 1 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day.

Combined with carbon capture, transport, and storage of approximately 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year, this facility will be a foundational investment in the development of a Houston CCS hub, which will have the potential to eliminate 100 million metric tons of CO2 per year and represents a meaningful step forward in advancing accretive, low-carbon solutions.

We also reached a final investment decision to expand another important carbon capture and storage project at our helium plant in Wyoming. In addition, we received the top certification of our management of methane emissions at our Poker Lake development in the Permian. We are the first company to achieve this certification for natural gas production associated with oil.

At the end of the first quarter, we implemented a series of organizational changes to further leverage the scale and integration of the Corporation, improve the effectiveness of our operations, and better serve our customers.

We combined our downstream and chemical operations into a single Product Solutions business. This new integrated business will be focused on developing high-value products, improving portfolio value, and leading in sustainability.

As a result of these changes, our company is now organized along three primary businesses: Upstream, Product Solutions, and Low Carbon Solutions. These three businesses are supported by corporate-wide organizations including projects, technology, engineering, operations, safety, and sustainability.

I will comment more on these in a few minutes.

Additional remarks on this slide will be provided during the discussion of first quarter 2022 financial and operating results.

Before I cover our financial results, I wanted to provide our perspective on the market environment.

In the first quarter, a tight supply/demand environment, primarily due to low investment levels during the pandemic, contributed to rapid increases in prices for crude, natural gas, and refined products.

Clearly, the events in Ukraine have added uncertainty to what was already a tight supply outlook. Brent rose by about $22 dollars per barrel, or 27% versus the fourth quarter.

Today, natural gas prices remain well above the 10-year historical ranges, driven by tight global market conditions and ongoing European supply concerns.

The same tight supply/demand factors have also pushed refining margins near the top of the range.

Chemical margins in Asia have fallen sharply, with product prices lagging the steep increases in feed and energy costs. In our case, the U.S. ethane feed advantage provided a significant positive offset versus this global view.

Additional remarks on this slide will be provided during the discussion of first quarter 2022 financial and operating results.