Exxon: Oil is the Only Game in Town

Anyone out there who was hoping that new Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson would steer the company in a different strategic direction from his predecessor Lee “the dinosaur” Raymond, should think again. We are not going to see a sudden greening of Exxon. We are not going to see the oil and gas giant rapidly disinvest out of oil and gas and into renewables. We are going to see business-as-usual. And that is more oil and gas.

In an interview with Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, Tillerson boasted about Exxon’s strengths. The company’s huge “73 billion barrel resource base sets us apart in terms of the opportunities it provides over a long time”, he crowed.

And rather than BP that is an oil company pretending to be green, Exxon is about oil and gas. Nothing else. “We know what we are”, says Tillerson. “We know what our main business is, and we are single minded about the way we run that business. We don’t allow ourselves to get distracted from that. From my perspective that is unique to us”. You know what they say: once an oilman, always an oilman, until the last drop.

And it’s going to be oil and gas that runs the global economy for 20 to 30 years. “Like it or not, oil and natural gas are going to be the dominant sources of energy well into the middle of this century”, says Tillerson. There’s “not anything out there” that can “deliver energy in the volumes and with the convenience that oil and natural gas provide today”.

So Rex is not for turning. Oh, well, bye-bye climate.