ExxonMobil Australia celebrates 60 years of CEDA membership and 130 years in Australia at the 2025 CEDA Victoria State of the State

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

It’s an honour for ExxonMobil Australia to be with you today celebrating our 60th year of CEDA membership, and to introduce The Honourable Victorian Premier, Jacinta Allan.

I too would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

At ExxonMobil Australia, we have a long, proud history of reliably supplying essential energy to Australians. From our humble beginnings as the Vacuum Oil Company (later known as Mobil Oil Australia) selling a barrel of cylinder oil to a Bendigo Goldmine from our Melbourne office back in 1895, 130 years later we have grown to become one of Australia’s most critical energy suppliers.

Following our discovery of Australia’s first offshore gas at the Barracouta field, in Bass Strait 60 years ago, our Gippsland operations have produced more than half of Australia’s crude oil, and in their most prosperous days, were providing over 10 percent of all Australian Government revenue.

And today, that vital role we play is just as important as it was decades ago.

Every day, our people work to supply almost half of Victoria’s transportation fuel needs, while every molecule of our Gippsland gas, produced from Bass Strait, goes exclusively to the domestic market, helping to heat and power Victorian homes and fuel Victorian businesses.

It was encouraging to see a pledge to secure affordable and reliable renewable energy for Victorians in the Victorian government’s Climate Change Strategy, released just last week.

We agree that balancing the supply of reliable and affordable energy while reducing emissions is crucial for our future; it is not an either-or proposition. It is an “and” equation.

Gas is an important source of electricity generation, and its role supporting the integration of intermittent renewables into power grids can help, not hinder, emissions reduction goals.

I am proud to say that we are doing our part by continuing to invest in maintaining our reliable supply of Gippsland gas to Australia. Our customers include some of Australia’s largest manufacturers of steel, glass and paper - industries that power Australian jobs and make our Australian way of life possible.

Over the last decade, we have invested almost a billion dollars in the Gippsland Basin, delivering much-needed gas to Australians. These investments include the Kipper 1B project, which started up just last month, the Kipper Compression Project, and the West Barracouta project, which came online in 2021.

And right now, in conjunction with our joint venture partner Woodside Energy, we are investing $350 million to develop the Turrum Phase 3 project, which will further bolster supplies of Gippsland gas to the east coast domestic market by 2027.

Turrum Phase 3 will be one of the largest gas developments on the east coast and means our Gippsland operations are set to continue powering Australian homes and businesses well into the next decade.

I mentioned earlier it has been 60 years since our first discovery of the Barracouta field in 1965. Those of you who are approaching that age are probably looking forward to retirement – and similarly, after decades of hard work, some of our Bass Strait fields have now retired.

So, while ongoing investments will see us maintain our reliable supply of gas from Bass Strait into the 2030s, we are, at the same time, responsibly decommissioning a number of our offshore facilities that are no longer producing oil and gas.

You may be surprised to learn that Victoria is home to Australia’s largest decommissioning project, and ExxonMobil’s largest decommissioning project globally, a multi-year, multi-billion dollar program of works.

So far we’ve safely completed over $2.5 billion  of early works across our offshore operations, including the permanent sealing of more than 200 wells.

All this work is preparing us for the arrival of the world’s largest construction vessel, the Allseas Pioneering Spirit, in 2027. This mammoth vessel, which is as long as almost 3 MCG fields laid end to end, will travel from Norway to start removal of  the 12 retired offshore facilities in Bass Strait and deliver them to our Barry Beach Marine Terminal in Southeast Gippsland, where they will be safely dismantled and recycled.

We plan to maximise recycling of these facilities for a second life and minimise the number of materials processed as waste.  In fact, our aim is to recycle more than 95% of the mostly steel material from our oil and gas structures. Most of the steel will either be sent offsite in trucks, or via ships for onward transportation to recycling facilities.

From our early days of exploration and development in the 1960s, through our ongoing investment in maintaining our supply of essential energy to Australia, right through to our responsible decommissioning of facilities as they progressively retire, ExxonMobil Australia is proud to be continuing our legacy of safe and responsible operations, supporting the economic prosperity of Australia, and this great State of Victoria, now and into the future.

I’d like to now welcome the Premier to the stage.