ExxonMobil announced on January 30. 2018, that it plans to triple total daily production to more than 600 000 oil-equivalent barrels by 2025 from its operations in the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico. Tight oil production from the Delaware and Midland basins will increase 5-fold in the same period.
The global oil giant cited recent corporate tax cuts as making possible the investment, which includes more than $2 billion on transportation infrastructure in the region. Rising oil prices have also helped fuel a resurgence in oil drilling in New Mexico and elsewhere.
In 2017 ExxonMobil agreed to spend up to $6.6 billion to buy the Permian acreage of Fort Worth's prominent Bass family to more than double its Permian acreage holdings.
Through the Bass deal and other smaller ones, ExxonMobil said it has doubled its footage drilled per day on horizontal wells in the Permian since early 2014 and reduced its drilling costs per foot by about 70 % as wells are drilled increasingly longer horizontally. Exxon said its combined development and production costs in the Permian are less than $15 a barrel.
The production growth and transportation upgrades will help feed Exxon Mobil's expanding refineries and petrochemical plants in Baytown, Mont Belvieu, Beaumont and Baton Rouge, La. with much of the oil & natural gas liquids they need to churn out fuels and plastics.
Exxon Mobil is planning to spend about $20 billion on refining, petrochemical and LNG growth along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. Much of that work is being completed now, while some projects are awaiting the final go ahead.
