Exxon CEO Woods sees advancing ‘quickly’ on Mozambique gas: Q&A

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Exxon CEO Woods sees advancing ‘quickly’ on Mozambique gas: Q&A

4:14 CAT | 11 Nov 2025

ExxonMobil's Rovuma LNG gas project on the Afungi peninsula, in the north of Mozambique, will produce 15.2m tonnes a year of LNG. [Image: Rovuma LNG / ExxonMobil ]

Exxon Mobil Corp. is close to lifting the force majeure in Mozambique that’s impeded progress on what will be one of the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas projects, Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said in an interview.

The company will move ahead “fairly quickly” with a final investment decision on the Rovuma LNG project once the force majeure has ended, Woods said on Bloomberg Green’s Zero podcast in Sao Paulo at the COP30 climate summit.

The provision was put in place after Islamic State-linked militants carried out an attack on the nearby town of Palma, in northeast Mozambique in 2021, delaying the project for several years. TotalEnergies SE, which is working on a similar development nearby, is also lifting its suspension. Together, the Exxon and TotalEnergies projects promise to transform the economy of one of the world’s poorest nations while supplying gas to global markets for decades to come.

Exxon expects to lift the force majeure “in the very near future,” Woods said. “We took the time to focus really on the project development and refine the design and come up with what we thought was the best concept. That work has been going. So I think we’ll be able to advance fairly quickly after force majeure is lifted to get into FID-ing the project and moving things along quickly.”

Woods spoke about why Exxon is on the lookout for low-cost resources to replace the 4.7 million barrels it pumps every day, and its plans to meet oil and gas demand at least through 2050, despite efforts to transition away from fossil fuels.

Here is a selection of other comments about oil and gas projects from the interview, lightly edited for clarity:

Q. Some of the best oil and gas deals happen when prices are low. Is Exxon looking to make a big acquisition?

A. “This idea that you can buy in a depressed market, that you can buy on the cheap — that’s not true. You actually don’t see that happening. If you have a company that can sustain a low price environment, they will wait the low price environment out.

“The only deals that you can get when prices drop off are companies that get in distress. And my expectation is the industry’s learned its lesson through these low price cycles. They’re very well positioned, so there’s probably not going to be a lot of distressed buying happening in a lower price environment this time around.”

Q. Some production-sharing contracts in Qatar are coming up to their 25-year expiration dates. Are you planning to renegotiate them?

A. “The production that comes from Qatar is built into our plans through 2030. This is like every other opportunity that we have. What we have to bring to Qatar, like every other resource owner is a unique value proposition where we bring something of benefit to them and in return we get something back.”

“Anything that we invest in has to compete in our portfolio. Anything that we invest in has to compensate us for the value that we think we bring. That’s a fundamental principle.”

Q. Exxon has said its eighth project in Guyana is likely to be gas. Does that signal an end to new oil projects in Guyana?

A. “As we prioritize some of the liquids rich parts of the reservoir, there are opportunities in more gassy parts of the reservoir. I think the government of Guyana has a desire to facilitate and catalyze gas piped on shore and to use that for power generation and to look at it potentially for broader industry opportunities. And we’re looking at that as a potential opportunity.

“We don’t have a specific bias towards oil or gas. We have a bias towards economic returns.”

Q. Would you be interested in oil and gas assets in Venezuela if they were to open up?

A. “We’ve been expropriated from Venezuela two different times. We have our history there.”

“We’d have to see what the economics look like. So I wouldn’t put it on the list or take it off the list. We’d have to see what the circumstances are at the time, which today I don’t know what they’re going to be, if they’re even different.”

Source: Bloomberg