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ExxonMobil updates corporate plan that aims to lower emissions

ExxonMobil has annouonced how it plans to reduce its carbon footprint. Photo via exxonmobil.com

ExxonMobil has updated its corporate plan through 2027, which will reflect their continued strategy to provide the products that work towards lowering emissions.

ExxonMobil is pursuing more than $20 billion of lower-emissions opportunities through 2027. The $20 billion request represents the third increase in the last three years, and is in addition to the company’s recent $5 billion all-stock acquisition of Denbury. Denbury helped expand carbon capture and storage opportunities through access to the largest CO2 pipeline network in the United States.

The portfolio will include opportunities in lithium, hydrogen, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage. The company is expecting that in aggregate it is expected to generate returns of approximately 15 percent and could potentially reduce third-party emissions by more than 50 million tons per annum (MTA) by 2030, which aligns with the company’s goals to combat climate change.

The company’s Low Carbon Solutions business reduces consumer’s greenhouse gas emissions, and will get approximately 50 percent of the planned investments support to help build this core part of ExxonMobil’s goal. The balance of the company’s low carbon capital will be used to reduce its own emissions, which will support its 2030 emission reduction plans and its 2050 Scope 1 and 2 net-zero ambition.

In addition, they are developing a leading position in lithium by fully leveraging its upstream skills in geoscience, reservoir management, efficient drilling, fluid processing, and extraction to separate lithium from brine. The company’s first phase of lithium production in southwest Arkansas is currently underway with first production is expected in 2027, and possible global expansion of the project. ExxonMobil aims to produce enough lithium to supply the manufacturing needs of approximately 1 million EVs per year by 2030.

“We continue to see more opportunities to harness our technology, scale, and capabilities to implement real solutions to lower emissions and to profitably grow our Low Carbon Solutions business,” Darren Woods, chairman and CEO, says in a news release. “Success in accelerating emission reductions requires the development of nascent markets. We need technology-neutral durable policy support, transparent carbon pricing and accounting, and ultimately, customer commitments to support increased investment. We’re actively advocating for each of these areas so we can grow a profitable, and ultimately large, low carbon business.”

In the Permian Basin, ExxonMobil is on track to reach net-zero emissions for unconventional operations by 2030. They expect to leverage its Permian greenhouse gas reductions plans to accelerate Pioneer’s net-zero ambition by 15 years (2035 from 2050.)

Recently, ExxonMobil and Pioneer Natural Resources announced an agreement for ExxonMobil to acquire Pioneer, which is an all-stock transaction valued at $59.5 billion, or $253 per share, according to ExxonMobil’s closing price on October 5, 2023. The merger combines Pioneer’s more than 850,000 net acres in the Midland Basin with ExxonMobil’s 570,000 net acres in the Delaware and Midland Basins, of which the companies will have an estimated 16 billion barrels of oil equivalent resource in the Permian.

The plan also intends to deliver $6 billion in additional structural cost reductions by the end of 2027, which should bring the total structural cost savings to $15 billion compared to 2019. Upstream earnings potential is expected to more than double by 2027 versus 2019, which is attributed to investments in high-return, low-cost-of-supply projects.

Other plan highlights included:

  • Expecting capital investments to generate average returns of around 30 percent, with payback periods less than 10 years for greater than 90 percent of the capex.
  • Generated $9 billion in structural cost savings with $6 billion more expected by 2027.
  • Increased pace of share repurchases to $20 billion per year from the Pioneer close through 2025.
  • Oil and gas production in 2024 to be about 3.8 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, rising to about 4.2 million oil-equivalent barrels per day by 2027.
  • Product Solutions is “leveraging scale and technology advantages” to nearly triple earnings potential by 2027 versus 2019.

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A View From HETI

No critical minerals, no modern economy. Getty images

If you’re reading this on a phone, driving an EV, flying in a plane, or relying on the power grid to keep your lights on, you’re benefiting from critical minerals. These are the building blocks of modern life. Things like copper, lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, and titanium, they’re found in everything from smartphones to solar panels to F-35 fighter jets.

In short: no critical minerals, no modern economy.

These minerals aren’t just useful, they’re essential. And in the U.S., we don’t produce enough of them. Worse, we’re heavily dependent on countries that don’t always have our best interests at heart. That’s a serious vulnerability, and we’ve done far too little to fix it.

Where We Use Them and Why We’re Behind

Let’s start with where these minerals show up in daily American life:

  • Electric vehicles need lithium, cobalt, and nickel for batteries.
  • Wind turbines and solar panels rely on rare earths and specialty metals.
  • Defense systems require titanium, beryllium, and rare earths.
  • Basic infrastructure like power lines and buildings depend on copper and aluminum.

You’d think that something so central to the economy, and to national security, would be treated as a top priority. But we’ve let production and processing capabilities fall behind at home, and now we’re playing catch-up.

The Reality Check: We’re Not in Control

Right now, the U.S. is deeply reliant on foreign sources for critical minerals, especially China. And it’s not just about mining. China dominates processing and refining too, which means they control critical links in the supply chain.

Gabriel Collins and Michelle Michot Foss from the Baker Institute lay all this out in a recent report that every policymaker should read. Their argument is blunt: if we don’t get a handle on this, we’re in trouble, both economically and militarily.

China has already imposed export controls on key rare earth elements like dysprosium and terbium which are critical for magnets, batteries, and defense technologies, in direct response to new U.S. tariffs. This kind of tit-for-tat escalation exposes just how much leverage we’ve handed over. If this continues, American manufacturers could face serious material shortages, higher costs, and stalled projects.

We’ve seen this movie before, in the pandemic, when supply chains broke and countries scrambled for basics like PPE and semiconductors. We should’ve learned our lesson.

We Do Have a Stockpile, But We Need a Strategy

Unlike during the Cold War, the U.S. no longer maintains comprehensive strategic reserves across the board, but we do have stockpiles managed by the Defense Logistics Agency. The real issue isn’t absence, it’s strategy: what to stockpile, how much, and under what assumptions.

Collins and Michot Foss argue for a more robust and better-targeted approach. That could mean aiming for 12 to 18 months worth of demand for both civilian and defense applications. Achieving that will require:

  • Smarter government purchasing and long-term contracts
  • Strategic deals with allies (e.g., swapping titanium for artillery shells with Ukraine)
  • Financing mechanisms to help companies hold critical inventory for emergency use

It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than scrambling mid-crisis when supplies are suddenly cut off.

The Case for Advanced Materials: Substitutes That Work Today

One powerful but often overlooked solution is advanced materials, which can reduce our dependence on vulnerable mineral supply chains altogether.

Take carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers, a cutting-edge material invented at Rice University. CNTs are lighter, stronger, and more conductive than copper. And unlike some future tech, this isn’t hypothetical: we could substitute CNTs for copper wire harnesses in electrical systems today.

As Michot Foss explained on the Energy Forum podcast:

“You can substitute copper and steel and aluminum with carbon nanotube fibers and help offset some of those trade-offs and get performance enhancements as well… If you take carbon nanotube fibers and you put those into a wire harness… you're going to be reducing the weight of that wire harness versus a metal wire harness like we already use. And you're going to be getting the same benefit in terms of electrical conductivity, but more strength to allow the vehicle, the application, the aircraft, to perform better.”

By accelerating R&D and deployment of CNTs and similar substitutes, we can reduce pressure on strained mineral supply chains, lower emissions, and open the door to more secure and sustainable manufacturing.

We Have Tools. We Need to Use Them.

The report offers a long list of solutions. Some are familiar, like tax incentives, public-private partnerships, and fast-tracked permits. Others draw on historical precedent, like “preclusive purchasing,” a WWII tactic where the U.S. bought up materials just so enemies couldn’t.

We also need to get creative:

  • Repurpose existing industrial sites into mineral hubs
  • Speed up R&D for substitutes and recycling
  • Buy out risky foreign-owned assets in friendlier countries

Permitting remains one of the biggest hurdles. In the U.S., it can take 7 to 10 years to approve a new critical minerals project, a timeline that doesn’t match the urgency of our strategic needs. As Collins said on the Energy Forum podcast:

“Time kills deals... That’s why it’s more attractive generally to do these projects elsewhere.”

That’s the reality we’re up against. Long approval windows discourage investment and drive developers to friendlier jurisdictions abroad. One encouraging step is the use of the Defense Production Act to fast-track permitting under national security grounds. That kind of shift, treating permitting as a strategic imperative, must become the norm, not the exception.

It’s Time to Redefine Sustainability

Sustainability has traditionally focused on cutting carbon emissions. That’s still crucial, but we need a broader definition. Today, energy and materials security are just as important.

Countries are now weighing cost and reliability alongside emissions goals. We're also seeing renewed attention to recycling, biodiversity, and supply chain resilience.

Net-zero by 2050 is still a target. But reality is forcing a more nuanced discussion:

  • What level of warming is politically and economically sustainable?
  • What tradeoffs are we willing to make to ensure energy access and affordability?

The bottom line: we can’t build a clean energy future without secure access to materials. Recycling helps, but it’s not enough. We'll need new mines, new tech, and a more flexible definition of sustainability.

My Take: We’re Running Out of Time

This isn’t just a policy debate. It’s a test of whether we’ve learned anything from the past few years of disruption. We’re not facing an open war, but the risks are real and growing.

We need to treat critical minerals like what they are: a strategic necessity. That means rebuilding stockpiles, reshoring processing, tightening alliances, and accelerating permitting across the board.

It won’t be easy. But if we wait until a real crisis hits, it’ll be too late.

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Scott Nyquist is a senior advisor at McKinsey & Company and vice chairman, Houston Energy Transition Initiative of the Greater Houston Partnership. The views expressed herein are Nyquist's own and not those of McKinsey & Company or of the Greater Houston Partnership. This article originally appeared on LinkedIn on April 11, 2025.


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