ASPO-USA on ExxonMobil

Last week, ExxonMobil ran a Peak Oil Advertisement in The Washington Post and The New York Times which claimed that peak oil is “decades” away and attempted to discredit what it called the “theory” of peak oil. ExxonMobil may be the world’s most profitable energy company, but it is important to recognize this ad as being both innaccurate and misleading. ExxonMobil’s own production statistics tell the story:

Since 1997, oil prices have quadrupled, yet ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most profitable private oil company, has not increased production at all. In no other industry, would a quadrupling of prices yield no increase in supply. Certainly, if Ipod prices had jumped in this fashion, Apple would find someway to manufacture more. So why isn’t ExxonMobil producing more oil?

The data below shows that that all the large international oil companies are in a similar situation.

It turns out that nine of the top ten IOCs have flat or declining production. BP is the solitary exception, due in part to one of its subsidiaries seizing an opportunity to get access to Russian oil.

ASPO-USA