Long-term financial resource management

It is our responsibility to help meet the world’s growing energy needs while providing competitively priced supplies to our customers and delivering value to our shareholders. Our investment decisions have impacts that resonate for decades and, therefore, we do not base our long-term investment strategy on short-term trends in commodity prices. In 2008, we continued investing at record levels — more than $26 billion for the year — and we expect to spend more than $125 billion over the next five years.

ExxonMobil has a development portfolio of more than 120 projects expected to produce over 24 billion oil-equivalent barrels (net) during their lifetime. We participated in eight major upstream project start-ups in 2008, with another nine anticipated in 2009. At peak production, these 2009 projects are expected to add over 485 thousand oil-equivalent barrels per day (net).

Creating shareholder value
Disciplined capital investment, operational excellence, and a long-term, consistent industry perspective allow us to achieve our goal of delivering superior shareholder value. This approach has consistently resulted in stock performance that outpaced the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index during the previous 5-, 10-, and 20-year periods.

In 2008, total shareholder distributions were $40 billion, including $32 billion in share purchases. For more than 100 years, the Corporation has paid dividends. Annual dividend payments per share have increased in each of the past 26 years — by 13 percent in 2008 and 58 percent since 2003.

• View chart: Cumulative distributions to shareholders (over past five years)

Reserves replacement
In 2008, our worldwide proved oil and gas reserves totaled nearly 23 billion oil-equivalent barrels or 15 years of reserve life at current production levels. Reserve replacement totaled 103 percent of production. Our five-year average replacement ratio is 110 percent.