Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods on getting to net zero by 2030 and Pioneer deal

Sheffield’s not on the board, but what happens now in terms of the things you’ve discussed and actually happens on the ground, particularly in the Permian, Well, now we get busy creating the value that was the premise for this deal. In the base case, you know, we’ve spent the last six months working with a clean team with Pioneer, thinking about integration plans, how we bring these two organizations together. I tell you today, David, I’m more confident than ever that the synergies that we anticipated when we first proposed the deal, we’re going to average about two $2 billion per year annually as we get ramped up and start running. Why are you more confident? I I think the, the quality of the people, the things that we’ve the the clean team learned as they were working with them. I think there’s going to be reverse synergies as well as the synergies that we can bring. They’ve got quality people, quality acreage, we’ve got technology and unique development plans. When you bring those two things together, we’ll produce more oil at a lower cost with a less environmental impact. So that’s going to be good for the US economy, for US consumers, it’s good for US energy security and it’s good for the environment. So all those things we’re incredibly confident on. And then with the additional value that we see bringing the Pioneer, some of the things from Pioneer into Exxon Mobil, it’s going to increase the value from an Exxon Mobil perspective. What’s the reverse synergy just to explain to people what are you talking about with things about some of the things that pioneers doing that we can then adopt and bring into the broader portfolio of Excel procurement opportunities, different things. As we look at the things that they were doing to run their business, you know they were very focused in the unconventional space. That brings a level of understanding and expertise that we can basically leverage across the rest of our businesses. I mentioned this cause of course I spent time in the premium with your guys when we did our documentary a couple of years ago. Where are you on electrifying all the efforts down there and how does Pioneer fit into that as well. So we’re making great, great strides in that. You know, we have a plan for our base Permian operation to get the net 0 by 2030. We are on that plan and a big part of that is electrification. So we’ve moved through most of our rigs and facilities out there to electrify them. What we committed to when we announced the Pioneer deal is they had a 2050 net 0 aspiration. We’re transitioning that into a net zero plan by 2035. And so that’s another piece of work. We’ll bring that acreage in that organization into the work we’re already doing in our base. Permian feel really, really good about the progress we’re making there in the potential that we’ll realize in getting to net zero by part of the issue. I remember at the time, as well as it’s not just enough to electrify, but you got to make sure the electricity that you’re actually using is being generated in a sustainable way. Is that the case? Absolutely. Yeah. We’re doing a lot of work to make sure we’re getting renewable power into those facilities. So all that’s part of the the plan that we put together. And so we will get to net 0 by 2030 for our base operation, certainly by 2035 for the Permian. We’ll look to see what we can do to bring that even forward and marry it with what we’re doing with our based operations there. On your recent earnings conference call, you were also asked about another area which is carbon capture of course, not something else we spent a good amount of time talking about during our dock, which I can continue to promote here. Maybe people will still watch it. It’s on Peacock, where do things stand in terms of the the Houston hub, Baytown, what, what, what, what you’re doing there. You got a number of questions about it on the call as well specific to sort of progress points that you can share. Well, what I’d say in the in the call, what we wanted to emphasize is that the transition and the drive to eliminate emissions in the economy has an electron solution, but it also has a molecule solution and we’re a company that knows how to manage and transform molecules. Carbon capture and storage is a big part of that. The challenge with with the existing technology for capturing carbon out of the atmosphere is it works for high concentration streams, but it’s very expensive for low concentration stream. So we’re working on a breakthrough technology to bring that cost down. We built this pilot unit in Baytown, which is early in its development, early in its run, but we’re seeing really positive signs. And so we’re working. It’s a brand new approach, you said brand new approach using brand new. But you think about where technology has come since what was essentially a very old technology around capturing CO2 for the purposes that was that technology was designed for. It works. It’s economic for what we’re trying to transition to and to capture very low concentration streams, we need a new technology. Fortunately, there’s been a lot of development in technology since that that original technology was developed. So we think there’s an opportunity to change, but we’re a long way, aren’t we, Darren, from actually getting to a point and you indicated this where we can really where this can be a profitable business in any real way. Well, I think we’re a long ways from getting the costs of capture down and that to me if you’re going to, if you’re going to achieve the global ambition of net zero, you’re going to need a lot of different tools in the toolbox. Carbon captures needs to be one of those. And if we can find a way to bring that cost down, get down the cost curve, which were very early in the technology cycle, that opens up huge opportunities around the globe in combination with what we’re doing with wind and solar, with with hydrogen, with all the solutions sets, the world needs a lot of solutions. We’re hoping to make this one of them. There’s lots of people working on this though. So I’m not suggesting we’ll be the only ones or we will be the ones that actually have this breakthrough. But whoever does, we’re they’re going to need companies like Exxon Mobil with our balance sheet, our ability to build these projects, to deploy that around the world at scale.