The Wall Street Journal reports that Exxon Mobil is still investing in oil and gas, even as it feigns allegiance to the climate alarmist agenda.
Exxon Mobil is looking at buying other oil companies, Chief Executive Darren Woods said, after losing its challenge to Chevron’s CVX $53 billion deal for Hess.
“I think there are opportunities out there for us,” Woods said in an interview this week. “We’re working to see if we can’t bring some of those to fruition.”
The bar for an attractive oil-patch deal is high, he said, pointing to Exxon’s $60 billion purchase of West Texas fracking giant Pioneer Natural Resources in 2023 as one that brought together the right ingredients, including talented workforces, to boost shareholder returns.
The WSJ makes note of Exxon’s financial results:
$7.1 billion: Exxon’s earnings in the second quarter fell 23% from the same period a year earlier. Its per-share earnings of $1.64 beat analysts’ expectations of $1.56 per share, according to FactSet.
$9.2 billion: The amount of cash Exxon has sent to shareholders in dividends and share repurchases. It’s also on track to buy back $20 billion of its shares this year.
Exxon’s latest earnings show what NLPC has argued for years: in the real world of energy demand, the path to shareholder value still runs through oil and gas. CEO Darren Woods loves to trumpet carbon-capture pilots and “net-zero ambition,” but the balance sheet tells a different story. Despite lower crude prices, Exxon generated enough cash to hand nearly ten billion dollars back to investors and is openly scouting for acquisitions that will deepen its upstream footprint. That is not retreat from hydrocarbons; it is a double-down.
When NLPC filed its 2024 resolution questioning the wisdom of tying executive bonuses to subsidized emissions-reduction schemes, critics claimed we were ignoring the future. Yet the future on display in these results is one where disciplined drilling, shrewd M&A, and robust capital returns still beat taxpayer-funded green experiments. Woods’s comments make clear that, rhetoric aside, Exxon sees opportunity in consolidating oil assets while politically driven competitors chase low-margin “transition” projects. NLPC has gone as far as to call for Mr. Wood’s resignation or removal in response to his climate friendly comments in the past.
Far from betraying climate commitments, Exxon’s decision to bank on its core business acknowledges an inconvenient fact: the world’s thirst for reliable energy keeps rising, and windfall profits flow to companies bold enough to meet it. Investors should welcome a strategy that prioritizes profitable barrels over headline-friendly pledges—and recognize that NLPC’s call for production-first discipline is being vindicated in every quarterly report.
