Darren Woods: You bet.
Operator: We’ll go next to John Royall with JPMorgan.
John Royall: Hey guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask on the Beaumont expansion and how the ramp is going there. And in terms of profitability, we’ve got Midland trading above Cushing now, but that’s probably not significant given diesel cracks are very, very strong. So, just wondering on the profitability of that project out of the gate relative to how you’ve been thinking about it when you sanctioned?
Darren Woods: Yes, I’ll take it. As I said before, if you look at Beaumont, when we — the concept of that project was developed five-plus years ago. And it really was looking at what I would call the feedstocks and intermediate balances going into that refinery and the options that we had to optimize the logistics piece of the equation and justified that project purely on logistics optimizations and lower-cost transportation to feed that refinery. And that’s kind of how we thought about that, so that is robust to wherever you’re at within the cycle. If you layer on where we’re at today in the commodity cycle and the fact that we are at on the very high end of refining margins, my expectation is that that refining expansion will do much, much better than what we — the basis on which we appropriate it just because we find the timing of where we find ourselves in that cycle.
And that’s good news. I mean that’s, I think, an important part of the investments that we make to make sure that we’re kind of participating in all phases of the cycle. But I think even better news is we’re not depending on that to generate a return from that investment. So, even as we move through the commodity cycle and at some point in the future, we find refining margins start to come off, and eventually, we’ll find ourselves in the bottom of the refining commodity cycle. That expansion will position our Beaumont refinery very well and will, I think, continue to be incremental to the value of that refinery. So, feel really positive about that. We’re making good progress. We mechanically completed that a little ahead of schedule, and we’re making good progress on ramping that facility up.
Jennifer Driscoll: We have time for one more question.
John Royall: Thank you.
Darren Woods: You bet.
Operator: Looks like we have time for one more question. Our last question will be from Roger Read from Wells Fargo.
Roger Read: Yes, thank you and good morning. Glad you’re able to port me in here. Just wanted to follow-up on Guyana. I think there was a lot of expectation at the Investor Day — well, won’t be an Investor Day, but there’d be a potentially big update on Guyana. I know things are going well there from a development standpoint, but I was just hoping you could address anything on the resource side and any update at all from a PSC political side, there’s been a little noise out there on that end?
Darren Woods: Yes, I think the point you made, we’re making really good progress. As we’ve said, we brought Liza 2 in ahead of schedule. We anticipate bringing Payara in ahead of schedule. We brought Liza 2 up very well, brought that online quickly and began producing at above nameplate capacity in the fourth quarter. And so I feel really good about the quality of those projects and the operational ability to bring those up and run them effectively, making good progress there. We’ve got Yellowtail in for government approval. I expect that to be a bigger FPSO. So, we’re making — I would say we’re at or ahead of the schedule and ahead of the expectations that we’ve talked about historically with Guyana. The resource base, as you know, continues to grow.
We continue to make discoveries. We continue to really optimize around those discoveries. And that’s a really big part of developing these projects is as we are in parallel to developing projects, continuing the exploration and then continuing to better quantify and qualify that resource base is making sure that our projects are optimized around that. So, there’s a balance that we’re striking around how best to optimize, and feel good about what we’re doing there. And frankly, I think the government feels really good about what we’re doing there. Importantly, the development of that resource and the value associated with that is manifesting itself in the country, which is a really important part of the equation here. We always said coming into this that this has to be a win-win-win proposition, needs to be a win for the company, it needs to be a win for the government of Guyana and it needs to be a win for the people of Guyana.
And that’s what we’re seeing there, a lot of jobs, a lot of economic opportunity opening up in Guyana. We’ve just — we’ve been working with the Guyanese government around a project to bring in gas power into the country, lower emissions and more reliable. We’ve got work going on to help bring up some of the other social services in the country. So, I think people are seeing the progress. And the fact that we’re bringing this on sooner and at lower cost, I think, is a benefit to the government. They recognize the values coming faster than originally anticipated. So, it’s a — I think it’s a good story of government, I think, and ExxonMobil, got very good relationships, working very constructively. And as I said, it’s a win-win-win proposition here and feel good about the progress we’re making.
Roger Read: And any thoughts on the resource base or the next time you’ll offer an update on that?
Darren Woods: I think as the team continues to drill and then quantify and characterize the results of those drills, when it gets to a material improvement, we’ll be out talking about that.
Roger Read: That’s great. Thank you.
Darren Woods: Roger, thank you.
Jennifer Driscoll: Thank you, everybody, for your questions today. We will post a transcript of our Q&A session on our investor website by the end of the week. Have a nice day, everyone. And I’ll turn it back to the operator to conclude our call.
Operator: This concludes today’s call. We thank everyone again for their participation.
