Exxon Refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into Exxon
XOM
In 2019 several people complained during an internal assessment that workers were forcing them to use impractical assumptions about how quickly the company could drill wells in the Permian to get higher value, they said. the Journal, which reviewed a copy of the complaint.
Citing anonymous sources, the article stated that the SEC had begun investigating the allegations after receiving the complaint. The SEC declined to comment for the story.
That oil and gas building, in the Delaware Basin of the Permian, is a key part of Exxon’s plan to build stone production. In 2017 he paid $ 6 billion for 275,000 acres of land that at the time produced just 18,800 barrels per day, although Exxon claimed that 60 billion barrels of oil were underground .
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, which turned 2020 into a very bad year for Exxon and other major oil companies, Exxon’s intentions to stimulate its oil production came under pressure. Investors were already starting to shrink from shale oil and gas as other big energy companies flowed with green energy.
This isn’t the first time critics have valued Exxon. At the end of June one of the same two Wall Street Journal reporters reported with a scoop on Friday that former Exxon senior accounting analyst Franklin Bennett had filed a complaint under the SEC’s spy program claiming that Exxon had deceived investors by not writing down the value of XTO Energy, a natural gas drilling company that bought it ten years ago for more than $ 30 billion. That article stated that other complaints were filed but did not specify who filed.
Exxon has gained a reputation for refusing to write down the value of its oil and gas holdings even when peer-to-peer oil companies write down big money in response to falling oil prices. Even in response to the 2020 oil market crash, Exxon did not say it would write down assets until the end of November, reassessing the value of its holdings down $ 17 billion to $ 20 billion, the biggest loss ever, by far after most other sailors have lost large lumps of value from their holdings.
Exxon says it values its assets over the long term, avoiding market changes that could temporarily cause oil to become acidic. Born from the John D. Rockefeller General Oil monopoly, it has been around for over 130 years. Today there is no denying doubts that the developing world is consuming more and more oil and gas and Exxon stands ready to deliver, no matter how close. Covid-led headlands and other great price jerseys. (Last year, oil futures prices turned negative for the first time ever.)
But this time could be different. The economic crisis fueled by Covid looks more like a water event in the world’s evolution towards green energy sources such as wind and solar and towards electricity transport. It has already tested BP, which takes an equally far-reaching view of energy markets, to begin to outperform their operations and reduce global oil consumption projections. permanently.
And most shale oil operators do not see oil reversal in the works soon. A recent study of shale oil operators by Kpler, a research apparatus, found that the average WTI price used for planning for capital expenditure in 2021 was $ 44 per barrel. The closing price of WTI on Friday was around $ 52 per barrel.