Global Policy Forum

By Neela Banerjee

If bigger is better, Exxon Mobil should never inspire doubt. It is among the richest companies in the world, certainly the biggest oil company, with its estimated revenue of $204.5 billion in 2002 exceeding the gross domestic product of Turkey.

While Exxon Mobil's size is its great strength, according to most analysts, it is potentially its most obvious weakness, some dissenting voices say. With the mergers in the late 1990's having created behemoths like Exxon Mobil, BP, TotalFinaElf and others, some analysts and industry executives now wonder, how big is too big?

In a speech at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston in February, Exxon Mobil's chairman and chief executive, Lee R. Raymond, described the challenge the oil industry, and perhaps most acutely his company, faced: "When we consider, that as demand increases, our existing base production declines, we come squarely to the magnitude of the task before us. About half the oil and gas volume needed to meet demand 10 years from now is not in production today."

Exxon Mobil's production has remained essentially flat for the last four years. It faces the enormous task of replacing the 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalents, a unit of measurement that includes crude oil and natural gas, that it draws from its wells each year. That task is made more difficult by the locations of its fields.

Much of its production is concentrated in North America and the North Sea, which are largely in decline, while the company's new, rich finds are still being developed. The question over the next decade or so, which is relatively brief in oil industry terms, is whether those new areas will be enough to replace what will be lost.

Exxon Mobil has the money and influence to vie for the world's biggest oil and gas reserves. But some industry executives and analysts warn that Exxon Mobil takes such a tough negotiating stance that it often alienates the countries across the table. That could become a problem because more than 90 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are owned by countries, national oil companies and the Russian oil companies, according to PFC Energy, a Washington consulting firm.

"As competition in the oil industry gets tighter, the challenge is accessing the reserves in the new areas, and every issue counts," said Gerald J. Kepes, a managing director at PFC Energy. "If all else is equal, and Exxon Mobil comes across as arrogant or makes it hard for a government to respond, and it's a problem they can fix, they should." Exxon Mobil, which is based in Irving, Tex., declined to comment on issues critics have raised until its analysts' presentation today in New York.

For years, Exxon Mobil has argued that it surpasses its competition by most measures, mainly by hewing to a tradition of generating profits by squeezing savings from its businesses rather than increasing production. Because of its success, its stock is seen by analysts as trading at a premium. Its return on capital employed has consistently led the industry, though some analysts say Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and TotalFinaElf may soon challenge that supremacy. Since Exxon's merger with Mobil in the late 1990's, the company has saved nearly $7 billion through numerous efficiencies, and that could reach $8 billion by the end of this year, Deutsche Bank estimated in a recent report.

But the report points out that most remaining savings may now come from refining and chemicals businesses, where companies have historically struggled to hold onto cash because of stiff competition. "How will Exxon Mobil track performance going forward?" the report asks.

Charles Maxwell, a senior oil analyst with Weeden & Company, said, "The company faces a huge public relations problem coming, due to lack of growth." The company, Mr. Kepes said, has been gradually broadening its focus over the last few years from its financial goals to include production targets. With projects in about 200 countries and territories, many of its most significant recent investments are in regions where oil and gas production are expected to surge over the next decade, like the Persian Gulf, West Africa, the Caspian Sea and the Russian Far East.

The company plans to spend $100 billion on exploration and production through 2010 as it strives to increase production capacity by about 3 percent a year. Production capacity growth, however, is not the same as increasing output. "Capacity is rising," the Deutsche Bank report notes, "but actual production volumes are going nowhere."

Whether it wants to expand production capacity or output, Exxon Mobil will need access to the world's best new oil reserves, and they are in countries that guard their resources jealously. Those countries offer far less favorable contract terms than the United States and European countries, which is a problem for all oil companies but perhaps most difficult for the largest companies like Exxon Mobil, which need huge reserves to replace the huge amounts they deplete every year.

Recently, BP took the gamble of investing $6.8 billion to create a new Russian oil company with local partners in an effort to pluck a piece of Russia's vast oil reserves. Analysts think it unlikely that Exxon Mobil will take such a risk. Instead, it negotiated for about a decade to lead the Sakhalin I offshore project in the Russian Far East. That methodical approach is Exxon Mobil's signature style: the company is highly centralized, and decisions about new investments are made at the very top, analysts said.

Exxon Mobil, most analysts say, has the money and stature to drive a hard bargain with oil-rich countries. And certainly, its shareholders insist that it sign a deal only if the terms are highly favorable. But Exxon Mobil's drive to stake a claim in some oil-rich areas has hit a few snags that some industry executives and analysts ascribe to what they see as the company's inflexibility and high-handedness. Its projects in Angola were delayed in part because of friction with the government, analysts said, and it failed to win the operator's position at the huge Kashagan field in Kazakhstan for similar reasons.

"It's not black or white, but that kind of position makes things difficult at times," Mr. Kepes said. "They're perceived as going in with the attitude of `it's the Exxon way or the highway.' "

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