La stratégie d'Exxon Mobile (document en anglais)

To understand the business Strategy of Exxon Mobile we will study its environment and those opportunities and the internal organisation. The goal is to find recommendations and evaluate future risks.

Many questions will arise into this study, for example, the interest for a company nowadays to be established in United States of America, or the growth of the oil and gas market... In the past the country could be considerate as the leader of the world because of its soft power but the world proposes other options like China. In a competitive context the United States stays an attractive country, thanks to $15,684,800.00 of GPD in 2012. In the same way, this country makes the global demand including the energies demand.

Concerning the oil and gas market, we have to analyse different aspects of it. There are the production of those resources, the reserves and the undiscovered reserves. Most of our arguments will concern the both resources of energy and even the oil market is more developed than gas market, we can detect a link between the both. Besides the consumption is an important point because it allows to the strategy and it concerns a wide variety of uses and users. However, we will focus us on the B to B strategy because it represents the largest target.

Source: http://news.thomasnet.com/green_clean/2012/04/30/the-damage-done-in-transportation-which-energy-source-will-lead-to-the-greenest-highways/

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration/ Annual Energy Review 2011

We have to considerate that, this market supposes a long term strategy that’s why we have different scenarios and the establishment of figures is hypothetic. These scenarios will influence the strategy on Exxon Mobile and his competitors (strategic groups in the industry).

Firstly, the earth could hold 6,000 Billion Barrels of oil as its reserves. Scenarios don’t encourage the production of oil because of its rarity in the future which will increase the price of oil. Consequently, Scenarios encourage the research on alternatives resources. At present, “The OPEC members hold around 75% of world crude oil reserves”. Nevertheless the most important in this market is to hold oil and in this case the most important countries are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.

Fig. World oil reserves by region

Sources: www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Oil_reserves

However, the production of oil has slightly dropped and predictions will go in the same sense. This decline of production shows that with had passed a peak of oil production and the consumption of energies have to evaluate in the same way. Nevertheless, the crude oil demand grows of 2% each year. In other words, the demand will evolve to surpass the offer and the price will rise. This improvement is explained by the high growth of MIST and BRICS countries. These countries are included in partnerships with the USA, in particular U.S.-Asia-Pacific Comprehensive Partnership for a Sustainable Energy Future (A U.S). We could consider an opportunity for American companies and in our case Exxon Mobile. Asia and Oceania hold 3% of the world oil reserves that’s mean the A U.S is not interesting for the oil and gas industry. But they could invest in renewable energies and they should help in the technologies improvement. The partnership is actually based on the technologies sharing.

Sources: http://www.oilcrisis.com/nations/2004/

Fig. Growing Wold Energy Demand

Source: http://www.cmpfinancialplanning.com.au/blog/the-truth-about-oil/

Besides, there is unconventional oil, which represents 70% of the all oil but it’s implied an evolution of technology to produce it. The United States of America should have a high reserve of shale oil. And they could decide to encourage investments in this sector if the global exchange rate increases by 5%. That’s could imply the rise of the oil price and ExxonMobil can’t afford to import the amount of oil they need for production any more.

Secondly, the World should hold 10,000 Trillion Cubic Feet of gas. It is more abundant than oil; in this case we will expect an increase of gas consumption especially in industry. This is the third energy consumed around the World. ? The most important reserves are held by Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UEA. The first one on this sector is Russia with 649 million of tonnes of production in 2010 (source: ATLAS, géopolitique de la Russie, Pascal Marchand)

...