Exxon to invest $28bn in 2010

By Sheila McNulty in Houston

Ft.com

ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest publicly listed oil company, committed on Thursday to $28bn in capital spending in 2010 and a range of $25bn to $30bn in investment per year on average through 2014.

This continues its strong investment programme of the last five years, which saw Exxon spend $110bn.

Rex Tillerson, Exxon’s chief executive, said the company’s ability to spend through the global economic downturn underlined its strengths versus competitors, which undertook massive writedowns, corporate reorganisations and delayed or cancelled projects.

”ExxonMobil stands apart from our competitors,” Mr Tillerson told the company’s annual analyst meeting. It remains well positioned to continue to capitalise on opportunities created by the downturn, he said.

In December, Exxon agreed to pay $31bn in stock for XTO Energy, a deal which will give it a large position in the booming domestic natural gas scene. The deal includes a further $10bn in XTO debt.

It is also pursuing a bid it made in October for a stake in Ghana’s Jubilee field, which the industry believes forms part of a newly discovered oil coast stretching off west Africa, from Sierra Leone to Ghana.

Exxon offered to pay $4bn to buy the 23.5 per cent stake in Jubilee currently held by Kosmos, the independent US oil producer backed by private equity groups Blackstone and Warburg Pincus.

But the project has been complicated by the Ghanaian government’s objections to the sale. The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation wants to buy the stake itself, with backing from a foreign partner.