The oil big just lately tapped
Dan Ammann,
a former funding banker and longtime GM government, to steer its fledgling low-carbon enterprise. Mr. Ammann’s process is daunting: flip a brand new unit supposed to cut back carbon emissions right into a revenue middle.
The choice is an uncommon selection for the 140-year-old firm, identified for a conservative tradition that prizes hiring workers out of faculty and usually selling senior management from inside its personal ranks. Mr. Ammann, a New Zealand native and race-car fanatic, had by no means labored for an oil firm earlier than becoming a member of Exxon this summer time. He was as soon as a contender to grow to be GM’s chief government and later clashed with present CEO
Mary Barra,
mentioned folks acquainted with the matter.
At Exxon, Mr. Ammann says he’ll try to run the brand new unit like a startup inside a storied oil-and-gas firm that possesses huge sources and engineering prowess.
“In some ways, we’re beginning with a clean sheet of paper,” Mr. Ammann mentioned, “however with this unimaginable set of capabilities.”
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Exxon, which has workplaces in Spring, Texas, plans to supply carbon-capture applied sciences as a service to different corporations.
The enterprise, created in February 2021 and dubbed Low Carbon Options, is primarily targeted on applied sciences that complement Exxon’s fossil-fuel enterprise by lowering the emissions related to them. The applied sciences embrace capturing carbon emissions from industrial websites and storing them underground. The economics of many of those applied sciences are unproven, and carbon-capture tasks have had a excessive failure fee globally due to technological issues.
An enormous a part of the job is determining a workable enterprise mannequin for the unit, mentioned Mr. Ammann, 50 years previous. Exxon has for years used applied sciences resembling carbon seize to cut back emissions from its operations, nevertheless it now plans to supply these as a service to different corporations.
“If you wish to even have a measurable affect to one thing as large as local weather change, you need to have a imaginative and prescient to construct a enterprise; that’s truly actually huge,” Mr. Ammann mentioned.
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The unit on Wednesday introduced its first industrial deal underneath Mr. Ammann, an settlement with the world’s prime ammonia producer,
Holdings Inc. Exxon will transport and completely retailer carbon dioxide captured at a CF Industries manufacturing website in southeastern Louisiana. Exxon mentioned it might sequester as much as 2 million metric tons of emissions yearly from 2025, pumping the carbon underground at a website it owns in Vermilion Parish.
Exxon didn’t disclose the monetary phrases of the settlement.
Exxon established the low-carbon unit final yr as buyers pressed the corporate to gear up for a shift in world power demand towards cleaner sources and months earlier than it misplaced a historic proxy battle to hedge fund Engine No. 1. Throughout one of many costliest activism campaigns ever, the fund argued Exxon didn’t have a viable marketing strategy for the power transition.
Exxon has vowed to spend $15 billion via 2027 curbing its emissions and serving to different corporations do the identical. It has mentioned its low-carbon investments will generate returns over 10%. Some critics say the business’s latest initiatives primarily serve to extend the lifespan of its oil-and-gas property by lowering their carbon footprint. Others accuse Exxon of greenwashing—solely paying lip-service to climate-change options to guard its public picture.
Mr. Ammann rejects allegations of greenwashing and mentioned he believes he and his staff have the help of Exxon CEO
Darren Woods
and different leaders.
Dan Ammann has labored in funding banking and the car business.
“I wouldn’t be right here if I didn’t assume we have been extraordinarily severe about what we’re doing,” he mentioned.
Raised on a dairy farm in New Zealand, Mr. Ammann started his profession in funding banking in New York within the Nineties, primarily at
Following the monetary disaster of the late 2000s, he had a front-row seat to the interaction of presidency, collectors and companies in monetary misery, engaged on the difficult restructuring of the U.S. automotive business. That included GM’s chapter and reorganization.
Mr. Ammann has beforehand challenged firm management. Because the chief government of autonomous-vehicle firm Cruise, Mr. Ammann and Ms. Barra disagreed concerning the course of Cruise, with Mr. Ammann in favor of no less than a partial separation of the corporate and Ms. Barra trying to preserve it in-house longer and combine it into GM, in line with folks acquainted with the matter. That disagreement contributed to his departure from GM in December 2021, the folks mentioned. Mr. Ammann declined to remark.
Barry Engle,
a former GM government who reported to Mr. Ammann, then GM’s president, mentioned Mr. Ammann was typically drawn to complicated challenges.
Mr. Ammann challenged the established order as he restructured a few of GM’s regional companies or when he led GM’s exit from Europe, a area the corporate had been in for many years however had been shedding cash in, Mr. Engle mentioned.
“He’s a fiercely impartial, crucial thinker who has his personal views, however he’s additionally labored for a few years with huge corporations and may be very shrewd in coordinating with greater agendas,” mentioned
Michael Ronen,
a former funding adviser for SoftBank, which invested in Cruise.
At Exxon, Mr. Ammann mentioned he’s making an attempt to get his workers snug reaching out to different corporations regardless of not figuring out precisely how Exxon’s capabilities will help potential prospects curb emissions. Taking that step is what introduced concerning the settlement with CF Industries and is what it’ll take to generate extra enterprise, he mentioned.
Exxon has vowed to spend $15 billion via 2027 curbing its emissions and serving to different corporations do the identical.
Carbon-capture tasks have a poor industrial document. Greater than 80% of proposed industrial carbon-capture efforts have failed globally, primarily as a result of the expertise didn’t work as anticipated or the tasks proved too costly to function, in line with a 2020 research by researchers at Canada’s Carleton College, the College of California, San Diego, and elsewhere.
The oil business’s carbon-capture efforts acquired a lift from this yr’s Inflation Discount Act, which expanded a tax credit score for carbon seize and sequestration. Exxon has begun to construct a backlog of tasks just like its CF Industries settlement and expects extra tasks to grow to be economically viable as expertise improves and prices fall over time, Mr. Ammann mentioned.
“You’re going to go from an setting the place the prices are fairly excessive and the coverage is form of nascent, the place solely a really small slice of tasks work,” he mentioned, into one “the place issues invert, and also you’ve acquired increased carbon costs, scaled-up expertise and decrease prices.”
—Mike Colias and Phred Dvorak contributed to this text.
Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com
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