ExxonMobil is spending $20 billion through 2022 to expand its chemicals and fuel-making capacity in Texas and Louisiana to transform U.S. shale oil and natural gas into products for growing consumer markets in Asia.
As Bloomberg reports, the shale boom is spurring Exxon to steer construction dollars back to its home country after decades of siting new plants to make plastics, industrial chemicals and motor fuels close to feedstock sources and end markets in the Middle East and East Asia, CEO Darren Woods said in remarks prepared for the CERAWeek energy conference today in Houston.
The plans answer a call by President Donald Trump for American companies to boost the number of U.S.-based jobs, and the White House immediately released a statement from Trump praising the announcement. The 11 new chemical, refining and LNG projects on the Gulf Coast will create 45,000 jobs, many of which will pay an average of $100,000 a year, Woods said.
“These projects are export machines, generating products that high-growth nations need to support larger populations with higher standards of living,” Woods said in his remarks. “Those overseas markets are the motivation behind our investments. The supply is here; the demand is there. We want to keep connecting those dots.”
The investments began in 2013 and will continue at least through 2022, Woods said in only his second public appearance since January, when he succeeded Rex Tillerson, who left the CEO’s job to become Trump’s secretary of state.
The announcement followed last week’s disclosure that Exxon is shifting half its worldwide drilling budget to U.S. shale fields next year.
