Darren Woods Discusses Future of Industry and Company With Employees

Darren Woods, ExxonMobil’s Chairman and CEO, conducted an Employee Forum recently and discussed the current state of the oil and gas industry, how the company is managing through this unprecedented period, and the company’s future.

As a follow-up to the Forum, the following email summarizing his remarks was delivered to all ExxonMobil employees. 

A message from Darren Woods – Employee Forum:

As you may know, today we held an employee forum at our campus in Houston. Unfortunately, the pandemic limited the number of people who could attend and, given the time differences of our businesses around the world, I thought it might be useful to summarize the key points for you to read at your convenience.

A recording of the forum is available on EMformation and will be on Inside ExxonMobil shortly. 

In the presentation, I discussed the current state of our industry, how we are managing through this difficult period, where we are heading as a company, and finally how I remain incredibly optimistic about our future, despite these challenging times.

Strategy reconnect

We started by looking at the changes we made over the past few years to the functional businesses that were formed at the time of the Exxon and Mobil merger to get the best of both companies. That structure served us well, but to compete in the current marketplace we needed an end-to-end view of the business, greater customer understanding, and more rapid translation of competitive advantages to wins.

So, as you know, we initiated strategies for each of our businesses focused on improving competitiveness and growing total shareholder returns. These strategies defined how we would increase competitive focus, drive efficiencies and effectiveness, and improve earnings power and cash-flow generation. We reorganized the Downstream and Upstream along value chains, created the Global Projects organization, updated the leadership framework, revitalized our performance assessment process and developed an industry-leading investment portfolio. 

We were making good progress on executing our strategy when the pandemic hit.

Demand destruction

It’s difficult to overstate the devastating impact of the pandemic on businesses big and small, in every community and country around the world. The impact has been especially severe on our industry as energy consumption contracted when economies shut down.

• Oil demand dropped about 20 percent – to 78 million barrels per day in April vs 101 million barrels a day in December. 
• Global automobile production dropped 60 percent in April versus the previous year, which impacts sales of chemical products and lubricants.
• Commercial airplane flights were down 70 percent during the same time period, dramatically reducing sales of aviation fuel.

Resilience in response

All of this economic loss only intensified the worry, stress and pain many of you faced with the health of loved ones threatened by Covid. Despite this, the women and men of ExxonMobil rose to the challenges of the pandemic by taking care of themselves and their families, helping their communities and delivering on business objectives.

We made contributions to those in need of our products – from sanitizers, to specialty medical materials, to fuel for first responders. But what sometimes gets less attention are the heroic efforts and sacrifices our people made to keep our businesses running and initiatives on track. 

We kept operations going around the world 24/7. That required working and living at refineries and chemical plants, on offshore platforms or in fabrication yards, with added Covid safeguards beyond our extensive safety protocols. It meant months at work, quarantined and isolated from families. Office workers were impacted too. You worked long hours from home – many of you without space or privacy. You completed critical work to keep businesses running and financial books accurate, balancing the needs of work with evolving personal challenges.

The business response was equally resilient and aided by the reorganizations of the Upstream and Downstream, increased visibility across markets and coordination along value chains. That led to quicker and more informed decisions regarding production volumes, refining and chemical operations, and other key parts of our business that just wouldn’t have been possible previously. 

Strong performance 

Despite the unprecedented demand destruction — and with all the distractions you faced — this year you have delivered excellent operating results, which is a testament to your commitment and dedication.

We are delivering record safety and environmental performance across the organization and are on track to significantly beat targets to reduce methane emissions and flaring. Facility reliability has improved despite operating in very dynamic conditions and managing different operating circumstances.

And crucially important, we are exceeding the targeted reductions in spending that we committed to in March, deferring more than $10 billion in capital and cutting 15 percent of cash operating expenses. 

You all should take pride in this. I am extremely proud of what you have accomplished. Thank you – for your hard work, your personal sacrifices, and for demonstrating the characteristics that make this company great.  

For the entire message, please visit corporate.exxonmobil.com.  

Source: ExxonMobil