Chevron Plans to Increase 2027 Exploration Spending by More Than $500 Million, Focusing on Three Major Offshore Regions

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 30, Mark Nelson, Vice Chairman of U.S.-based Chevron, said during the company's third-quarter earnings call that it plans to raise oil and gas exploration capital expenditure in 2027 by about 50% compared with the 2025 baseline, with the increase expected to exceed $500 million, focusing on three major offshore regions: the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic continental margin, and the Eastern Mediterranean. The company plans to gradually increase annual exploration drilling to about 20 wells, roughly half of which will be in areas covered by existing infrastructure and the other half in frontier exploration areas.

Chevron's exploration capital expenditure in 2025 exceeded $1.2 billion, higher than the approximately $1 billion levels in both 2023 and 2024. Since mid-2024, the company has added more than 20 million acres of exploration area, roughly doubling its exploration block area compared with 2024, with operations covering 12 new basins.

In the third quarter of 2026, Chevron added 6 exploration blocks in the Gulf of Mexico and obtained new exploration rights in Angola, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, and Egypt. The company next plans to continue evaluating oil and gas exploration opportunities in Namibia, Equatorial Guinea, and Suriname.

Chevron has integrated its global exploration business into a unified management system and introduced artificial intelligence tools for seismic data analysis, exploration target screening, and project evaluation. Company management said the new management system adopts unified global project evaluation standards to shorten the decision-making cycle for exploration investment.

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said the company will announce further arrangements for its 2027 capital expenditure plan after its board meeting in December 2026.