Plans for LNG Sales
ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum, through its joint ventures, RasGas and Qatargas, have plans to deliver 15.6 million tons a year of LNG to the U.S., and a similar amount to the UK. To handle the LNG, we are progressing plans to build $600 million onshore LNG receiving terminals near Corpus Christi, and Port Arthur, Texas, in the U.S. and another in South Wales in the UK. An offshore project which includes Edison is also planned for the North Adriatic off the coast of Italy. These facilities are expected to be operational late in the decade with each having an initial processing capacity of about one billion cubic feet of LNG per day. Other receiving terminal opportunities are being evaluated.
As energy demand grows, more and more natural gas will need to travel a great deal farther. And, as one of the world’s largest suppliers of natural gas, we’re doing all we can to get it where it is needed
Horizontal Drilling in Russia
Extended-reach horizontal drilling technology is playing a critical role in a $12 billion development of a major oil and gas resource located off the Northeast Coast of Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East. A five-company consortium, with an ExxonMobil affiliate as operator, is developing the resource, with initial production expected in 2005.
Sakhalin’s Chayvo field will be developed with numerous extended-reach horizontal wells drilled from an offshore platform and from an onshore location. Some wells will extend more than 6.5 miles horizontally, ranking them among the longest in the world. Application of this drilling technology reduces development costs and minimizes marine impacts by avoiding the need for additional offshore structures.
Drilling in Arctic Conditions
Drilling for oil in arctic conditions presents unique challenges. This is what an ExxonMobil affiliate faces offshore Canada’s East Coast as it develops the Hibernia oil field, which lays in the path of the annual North Atlantic iceberg migration.
The world’s only iceberg-resistant offshore structure, the Hibernia platform is taller than a 60-story skyscraper and weighs 1.2 million tons. Surrounded by a protective 50-foot-thick concrete belt, the platform can withstand the impact of a million-ton iceberg without damage. Some of Hibernia’s horizontal wells reach reservoirs that lie four miles from the platform.
Remarks by Lee R. Raymond
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Exxon Mobil Corporation
Dallas Chapter of the World Affairs Council
September 30, 2004
I am very appreciative, and honored to receive the H. Neil Mallon Award.
The World Affairs Council provides this area with a vital service when it brings national and world leaders to Dallas. It provides a special opportunity to focus attention on issues and topics that are central to our nation, companies and our personal lives. It is always important to remind ourselves how much the world beyond this city and this nation can affect us.
I am particularly reminded of this as we enter the final weeks of the presidential election campaign. Inevitably, and as expected, the political debate has touched on energy, and a great deal has been said on the subject.
As you can imagine, some of what has been said I find myself in agreement with. And as for other commentary, well, I would have to differ.
But regardless of political persuasion, there ought to be common agreement that providing adequate amounts of energy in an environmentally acceptable way is of vital importance to this country. And, I would add, it is equally important to countries throughout the world.
Another central fact we need to keep in mind is that we in the United States will need increasing amounts of petroleum energy from other nations. Even with a reinvigorated effort at finding and developing US energy, we will still be increasingly dependent on other countries for the energy we use.
Because the countries that supply us with much of the energy we use are, and will increasingly be, central actors in maintaining our economic health, we need to use that knowledge to guide our international as well as our national policies.
Now I understand that many people want alternatives to imported energy but do not want to see more drilling in the United States, offshore our coasts, or in Alaska. Nor do they wish to approve a reinvigorated nuclear electrification program or an expanded coal mining effort.
These same people are often remarkably optimistic about finding alternatives to petroleum. I think that these views simply do not add up to an adequate plan for future energy, and a reality check is in order with regard to the cost of these alternatives as well as the immense amounts of energy that will be required to ensure global prosperity.
What we can and must do is make sure that we are able to tap the widest possible range of international energy sources.
This will mean a willingness to permit and build facilities to import liquefied natural gas. We now see the need for import capacity in the Gulf Coast and have begun efforts to get permits. Those plans face some concerns over safety from local communities, which we believe can be successfully satisfied, but we should all recognize that the stakes in having adequate energy supply are high.
Another implication is that our energy will increasingly come from places where social conditions are not well advanced and where problems of governance exist.
This reality will mean that we must pay attention to promoting policies that will help these countries successfully address the challenges they face. Some of the efforts will need to be directed to the serious diseases that afflict people in these countries, such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS. Other efforts will need to focus on improving governance, building greater infrastructure, and providing sensible economic development assistance.
And part and parcel will be facilitating a liberalized international trade regime under which products from developing countries can find a market.
And of course, no survey of the international energy scene would be complete without a frank look at carbon emissions and the global warming debate.
Clearly, this is of central interest to many people, and we share with them a commitment to find ways to provide energy with lessened greenhouse gas emissions.
But there is no way around the fact that at this point no one has found a way to provide increased economic prosperity without increasing energy use, which has been and will be best met with fossil fuels.
Carbon reductions will ultimately depend on success in a long-term program of research and development of new ways to generate energy. Importantly, these new ways must be practical and economic, applicable to the advanced as well as the developing world.
We are helping to sponsor some of this research, but it would be naive to expect that solutions will readily present themselves. It is probable that the investments needed for the evolution of our energy system will be huge and the time needed for the changes to be deployed will be measured in many decades. This cannot be an excuse for waiting, but it should be a reason for realistic expectations and practical policy steps.
But clearly - and a key point that I would like to leave you with tonight - is that the world of energy is overwhelmingly and increasingly an international world. We are more and more thrown into the international arena for our basic energy supplies, which require policies that will improve the lives and conditions and governance of energy-producing countries abroad, and approaches to alternative energy that reflect the realities of technology, economics and development on all continents.
This very international world is the one that the Dallas Committee of the World Affairs Council has consistently placed at the forefront of its programs, and on which it has asked its audience to focus. That is as it should be, and stands as the source of great pride for the work of this organization.
I thank you for your contributions and for the recognition that you have honored me with tonight.
IRVING, Texas (October 18, 2004) -- Exxon Mobil Corporation announced today that its subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production UK Ltd, has participated in first production from the $560M Goldeneye project in which it has a 39 percent equity stake. Estimated recoverable resources from the project total approximately 135 million oil-equivalent barrels. The expected production rate is 300 million standard cubic feet of gas per day and associated liquids. Shell U.K. Limited is the operator of the field.
The development involves transporting the full well stream at reservoir pressure from a single unmanned platform to the existing Shell/Esso onshore processing facilities at St Fergus on the North-East coast of Scotland.
Commenting on first production, Robert Olsen, chairman and production director of ExxonMobil International Limited, said, "We are pleased with the start-up of Goldeneye. The project is an important new contribution to our production from the UK North Sea. A key aspect of this new development is that it utilizes existing onshore infrastructure and provides further feedstock supplies for the Mossmorran NGL plant and the adjacent ExxonMobil operated Fife Ethylene Plant." |
