Exxon Mobil Corporation (ticker: XOM) added 2.7 billion oil-equivalent barrels of proved oil and gas reserves in 2017, replacing 183% of 2017 production. ExxonMobil’s proved reserves totaled 21.2 billion oil-equivalent barrels at year-end 2017. Liquids represented 57% of the reserves, up from 53% in 2016. According to the company, ExxonMobil’s reserves life at current production rates is 14 years.
During 2017, proved additions at Upper Zakum in Abu Dhabi totaled more than 800 million barrels of crude oil.
Additions from liquids-rich unconventional plays in the United States, mainly in the Permian Basin, totaled approximately 800 million oil-equivalent barrels. Additions in the Permian are expected to increase daily production in that basin to more than 600,000 oil-equivalent barrels by 2025. The company recently announced its intentions to triple its Permian production.
Offshore Guyana, ExxonMobil has discovered recoverable resources, including current proved reserves and additional resources, estimated to be 3.2 billion gross oil-equivalent barrels prior to the 2018 Ranger discovery. Production from Liza Phase 1 is expected to begin by 2020, less than five years after discovery. In Mozambique, ExxonMobil acquired a 25% indirect interest in Area 4, which contains an estimated 85 trillion gross cubic feet of natural gas in-place.
As a result of higher prices in 2017 relative to 2016, about 900 million oil-equivalent barrels in North America qualified as proved reserves under SEC guidelines due primarily to the extension of the projected economic end-of-field-life.
Fortifying its resource base
ExxonMobil added 9.8 billion oil-equivalent barrels to its resource base in 2017 through by-the-bit exploration discoveries and strategic acquisitions. This was the largest addition to the resource base since the acquisition of XTO Energy in 2010.
Through its acquisition of various entities from the Bass family of Fort Worth, Texas in 2017, ExxonMobil added significant resource in the Permian Basin. Key resource additions were also made in deepwater Brazil pre-salt with the acquisition of interest in the two billion gross oil-equivalent-barrel Carcara field.
Three new discoveries offshore Guyana in 2017 also contributed to the by-the-bit resource additions, Exxon said. Additional exploration drilling in Guyana is planned in 2018 on the 11.5 million gross acres currently held offshore.
ExxonMobil’s resource base totaled approximately 97 billion oil-equivalent barrels at year-end 2017, taking into account field revisions, production and asset sales.
