Exxon to boost spending by almost $2 billion by 2010

Wednesday, March 8th 2006, 8:31 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Exxon Mobil Corp. forecast Wednesday that its spending on oil and gas drilling, refining and chemicals manufacturing would rise from about $18 billion now to almost $20 billion a year between 2007 and 2010.

The world's largest publicly traded oil company said in a presentation prepared for Wall Street analysts that roughly three-fourths of that amount would go to oil and natural gas exploration and production, and that this would help boost its output capacity by 2 million barrels a day by 2015. In 2005, Exxon said it produced more than 4 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based company identified 46 major projects that would start up between 2006 and 2008, including development of oil and gas fields in Canada, the Gulf of Mexico and West Africa.

Exxon reported net profit of $36.1 billion in 2005 _ the highest ever for a U.S. company.