Darren Woods: Well if you think about — sure, and good morning, Devin. If you think about the complexity of what the organizations are dealing with and in particular the upstream that as we — as you go through the course of the year, and they’re drilling, and they’re collecting data, and we’re seeing the production, we’ve got a real-time optimization loop that takes the experience that we’ve had and builds it back into our go-forward plan. So it is a very dynamic process. And we’ve got, to Kathy’s point, at lot of — we’re using a lot of technology to make sure that we’re learning from all the data that we’re collecting as we go and that we’re adjusting our plans to optimize value. I would tell you, the organization understands it has an obligation to drive value and to find the value opportunities and to make sure that when we decide to spend money that we know that spend is going to be productive spend and that we’re going to be efficient in executing that spend.
And beyond that, they’re not constrained. If they find that we’re going to hit a constraint or we’re going to hit something that’s not incorporated in the plans, we have a conversation about that. So I would tell you it is a very well controlled process. Your point about capital coming forward in the fourth quarter, I would tell you the decisions that we made that led to going a little above the guidance weren’t made in the fourth quarter. Those were made as we were going through the year with the recognition that if we took some of the steps as we were going through the year, that as we got to the end of the year, those numbers would grow potentially but up on — well, slightly above the guidance. And we made the decisions as we were going.
And it’s a very dynamic process. So I think that’s how I would think about it, that we’re going to continue doing that going forward. Obviously, the Permian, we continue to learn with the technologies that we’re bringing in there, the techniques that we keep evolving. So my expectation is we’ll continue to adjust as we go to maximize the value of the production and what we’re learning through the technologies that we’re deploying. And then with Guyana, I mean don’t underestimate the complexity of these reservoirs and the challenges the organization has. So as they’re drilling and gaining information, we’re optimizing that as we go as well. And if we see an opportunity to advance the development and bring it forward and bring [NPV] (ph) with that, we’ll take that.
And so I would just tell you, it’s hard to predict because what are you going to learn? I mean, if we knew that now, it wouldn’t be a learning. We’d know it. It would be built into the plan. So it’s hard to really predict the learning piece of it. Anything to add, Kathy?
Kathy Mikells: I’d just say if you look at the specifics of what we delivered as a result of actually spending a little bit more on CapEx, I think you see that just goes hand in hand to how we drove value for shareholders. So in the Permian, we had guided to 600,000 kind of oil equivalent barrels, we came in at 620,000. In Guyana, we had said 380,000, we came in at 390,000 right? And you think about where we’re at in Guyana today and we’ve got Prosperity, the third boat which is in the Payara development already up to nameplate capacity as we stand here today. And that’s because we made the decision to drill more wells to ensure that we could get that boat up to capacity as quickly as possible and our organization absolutely delivered on that. So those were the right economic decisions that drove value for our shareholders.
Devin McDermott: Great. Yeah, I agree the strategy is certainly yielding great results. Thanks so much.
Operator: The next question is from John Royall of JP Morgan.
John Royall: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So my question is on Payara. You’ve expressed some confidence that you can ultimately get above the nameplate as you have on the first two platforms. Should we expect kind of a continuous ramp towards a higher number or does it run closer to nameplate for a period of time and then further unlock happens kind of more in a step change?
Darren Woods: Yeah, good morning, John. Thanks for the question. I think, just maybe step back and talk a little bit about the process. Organization does its best to design the projects for the capacities that we want to deliver and then as they hand the cap, the projects group hands that off to the operating group. They’re obviously, as they begin operation testing to see where we are with respect to constraints and every — the advantage that we have here is that we’ve tried to stick to some consistent design. This design [won’t build many] (ph) concept, we’ve tried to the extent possible, maintain consistency from boat to boat. Obviously, as the subsurface and the complexity of the developments change, we have to make adjustments.
So it’s not quite a cookie cutter approach, but we tried to maintain a level of consistency. One, because that keeps your capital cost down. But two, it allows us to take the learnings from the previous boats and apply it to the one we just started up, and advance things faster to do things quicker. And a great example for Prosperity is how quickly we managed to bring that unit up and get flaring down and get to nameplate capacity. That was — we did that essentially at record times, which is a reflection of the fact that the organization as they’ve been bringing these units — these production units on line that they’re learning and then taking those learnings and forwarding it to the next post. So my expectation is you’ll see us move faster and faster as we go.
Difficult to predict exactly what that ramp up looks like or the step changes if you will because it’ll be a function of what they bring into — what the next constraint that they overcome to make sure that we can continue to run those facilities safely within all the operating limits but at the same time maximize their value. And so I would say take the previous ramp ups as a basis and then our expectation is the organization will find ways to do it even better.
Kathy Mikells: And then if you don’t mind, I’m just going to add because I know everybody is now going to be modeling what Guyana is going to look like for the year. So this is just a reminder that at some point in the second half we’re working on the gas to energy project, right, and laying the pipeline down to bring that gas from Liza 1 and Liza 2 onshore, to basically kind of plug it into the power plant that ultimately will drive down costs for consumers in Guyana. And we will be taking Liza 1 and Liza 2 offline for a period of time as we kind of hook them up to that pipeline. So that’s just a reminder that we’ll have a little bit of downtime at some point in the second half.
John Royall: Thank you.
Operator: The next question is from Bob Brackett of Bernstein Research.
Bob Brackett: Good morning all. At the risk of oversimplifying, if I think about 2023, it was a very strategy-focused year, Denbury, Pioneer, Lithium. If I look at 2025, it’s a major project delivery year. 2024, is this a year of execution or could there be some level of strategic interesting moves that we should think about?
Darren Woods: Yeah, good morning, Bob. I would just say you have oversimplified it. I would start with every year is a year of execution. And I think it’s the fact that we have managed maybe in comparison to some of our peers to make it look easy and have executed, I think, at a high level. Make no mistake, the organization, that is a — continues to be a real challenge across all of our operations. And I think the men and women of ExxonMobil have done an outstanding job of consistently executing to a very high standard, as I said in my prepared remarks. So I don’t want to take anything away from that and I also don’t want to suggest that we, for a minute, take that for granted or take our eye off of that ball. And so that’s job number one.
