Name: Chevron CFO on Balancing Profits and Sustainability
Uploaded: 2026-09-22T21:24:00Z
Duration: 20 min 19 s
Description: Amid shifting regulations and evolving energy markets, Chevron Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner sits down with WSJ Leadership Institute President Alan Murray during United Nations General Assembly week in NYC to discuss capital allocation and how the energy giant is creating value in a rapidly changing economy.

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Amid shifting regulations and evolving energy markets, Chevron Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner sits down with WSJ Leadership Institute President Alan Murray during United Nations General Assembly week in NYC to discuss capital allocation and how the energy giant is creating value in a rapidly changing economy. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

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Amid shifting regulations and evolving energy markets, Chevron Chief Financial Officer Eimear Bonner sits down with WSJ Leadership Institute President Alan Murray during United Nations General Assembly week in NYC to discuss capital allocation and how the energy giant is creating value in a rapidly changing economy.

Chevron CFO on Balancing Profits and Sustainability

Let's talk about energy first. I mean, we've got crude oil prices up, what, 50% since the start of the war, gas prices up 50%, diesel prices up 70%. How long is this gonna continue?

Well, prices are hard to predict and there's a lot that goes into trying to predict prices and how long they will remain elevated. Just to put it in context, what we've been through over the last six months plus is a very significant disruption to 20% of the crude, the flows around the world in the global market. And so you can't have a shock of that scale and magnitude and not see it show up somewhere. And that's just if you look at the fundamentals, given the demand for energy that exists every day. So, obviously, there's been some relief of that over the last couple of months, and prices have now continued to increase since that has not continued. So, there's been volatility over the last couple of months as well. So, I think until we see flows resume through the streets at a predictable level and get the refining capacity that also impacts price at the pump, it's not just crude oil and fundamentals. It's also how much refining capacity is running. And there's been some of that that's offline, given some of the Russian refinery and events. And so, until we see changes in both of those levers, prices are likely to stay elevated. And we haven't seen prices above 150 or well above 100 for long periods of time because we had a lot of supply when we entered into the year. And so, the commercial inventories, the strategic petroleum reserves, the crude that was on the water, all of those things have helped things over the last, say, eight months.

But your boss, Mike Worth, said recently, "I saw that those kinds of buffers in the system are now being worn down." Does that raise the risk that you could see a real spike, $150-a-barrel-type spike?

Yeah, I think Mike talked about the reality of the buffers and the role they have played, and actually helped the situation over the early couple of months. So, again, I think it's very hard to predict prices. What we're focused on and what we're in control of, because we don't control prices, is obviously putting as much supply in the market as we can and running our refineries as reliably as we can. And we're doing both of those things.

Yeah, let's talk about the supply piece. Obviously, before this war in the Middle East, we had what happened in Venezuela. Is Venezuela gonna be a significant source of increased supply anytime soon?

Not in the short term, but I would say we increased production in Venezuela 15% this year alone. So there has been some growth, but the growth that we announced recently with our deal in Venezuela, and so that the kind of high the new terms have unlocked, new competitive low cost, long-duration growth for us, that's over a five-year horizon. And so, what we're focused on with the plans we have is growing production seven to 10% this year, and we're on track with that. So, we came into the year with a growth plan and we're delivering on that.

Where else is supply coming from?

From the Chevron portfolio?

Yes. You said you're increasing supply, as well as focusing on refining.

Yes, so in this year, we're growing production from Guyana. We've been growing in Argentina. We've been growing in the Gulf of America. We've also been growing in West Africa. We've been growing in Eastern Mediterranean. So, the seven to 10% growth-

You're working across the board.

We're working across...

Every place you produce.

Across the world.

And can you keep that going for the next few years?

Our plan is overall between now and the end of the decade, and this is excluding Venezuela, is to grow two to 3%. That's more like 3% now, with the inclusion of Venezuela.

Yeah, now, for Chevron, I mean, if you look at your financial numbers, this crisis is not all bad, right? I mean, prices have been helpful for your profits. You have record profits.

The prices impact the financials. And so we reported a really good quarter. But at the end of the day, we don't control the prices. What we control is the operational performance. And so we also... I'd point out the operational performance that we communicated in the quarter as well. We had new records-

You're strictly a price taker. You couldn't use any of that money to control prices.

We're a price taker, we're not controlling price. What we control is putting supply onto the market, and running refineries, and making products for consumers with excellence every day.

Yeah. I wanna go back to Venezuela just for a minute because you now have other companies that have been encouraged to come into Venezuela. Chevron, for the majors pretty much, was the only one still there before the war. How's that gonna impact your business?

Well, we don't know the details of what the other companies have negotiated with the Venezuelans, but obviously more companies working in Venezuela, there will be more competition, there will be more vendors and suppliers, vendors and suppliers that support the oil and gas business. I would imagine that that will grow over time. What we've had over the last few years is we've seen growth in the three joint ventures that we're participating in with the national oil company, PDVSA. And those three joint ventures have operated really well. We've grown production 5X over just a short few years with framework agreements that we have had in place for a number of years. We've been investing in the facilities. We've been drilling wells. We're now producing about 280,000 barrels a day. So, on that platform of good performance with these new terms, we're now committed to growing and doubling that, and going even beyond that.

So, we were talking earlier about the volatility and the uncertainty that CFOs everywhere have to put up these days, but you all put up with kind of an extreme form of it, right? I mean, you have the geopolitical crises, whether it was the invasion of Ukraine, now in the Middle East, the effect that that has on oil prices. You have huge political volatility going from a president that was actually kind of beating up on oil industry and subsidizing renewables to one who thinks the climate crisis isn't real and is encouraging oil. And you have to think long term as a CFO. How do you do that when there's so much variability in the environment?

You don't try and predict it. You plan for it, is how I would describe it.

Plan for scenarios?

Plan for volatility. Plan for uncertainty. Plan for things that can happen. And when I started in the business back in 1998, I was working at the time on a facility, and we were getting eight bucks a barrel for our crude. So, I started at a time when we were in a down cycle. And so, over my almost 30 years, I've seen five cycles, I think. And so, volatility and uncertainty is part of life. So, we try and plan for it. How do we do that? We make sure that we take a long-term view, not only to operating the business, so we don't bet on high prices. We actually look at the business through the lens of multiple scenarios and multiple prices. So, we have very rigorous planning ritual that we do, where we not only test ranges on economic growth, but we also test ranges on prices for all commodities. And so, it's very complicated. But, at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do is to define more of a fur way that keeps the business running competitively, successfully, and allows our investments to make good returns, competitive returns through the ups and the downs. And so, when you have a period of high prices, what we're doing right now is we're de-leveraging. So we're building more strength into the balance sheet because we know it doesn't last forever. So, I think it's about planning, rigorous planning, scenario planning, and never... Never believing that even when we have high prices that they last forever because they don't, and that's been our experience. And so that's how we think about it from a capital allocation and risk management perspective.

And how do you think about how sustainability and climate factor into that? I know when you were Chief Technology Officer, you were leading some of the main areas into carbon capture, renewables. How do you think about the need to decarbonize, the timetable for decarbonization, and how that affects your business?

Well, our objective is to affordably and reliably deliver energy to customers. And doing that in the most efficient way and sustainable way is part of the value set of the company. So, no matter what our-

But sustainability is part of that equation.

Sustainability...

Long-term sustainability.

Long-term is part of that equation. And so, no matter what asset that you visit around Chevron's portfolio, they have environmental performance metrics, carbon efficiency metrics. And in some parts of the business where we have operating carbon capture and storage, like in Australia or just about to have a green hydrogen facility in Utah, I mean, sustainability is front and center. I mean, we also have a program that we manage at a corporate level where we invest capital into methane reduction or projects that can help us reduce carbon intensity and continue to make progress in sustainability.

Do you still have a net zero target?

Well, our targets are upstream and downstream targets, and we still have upstream and downstream targets, yeah.

But have they changed?

Our commitment to targets has not changed.

It hasn't changed, because you have... Obviously, a lot has changed in terms of the world's appetite for energy, and a fair amount has changed in terms of the political environment in this country, at least, around these issues.

Yeah, we did not change our strategic focus. And so, we've always had a very pragmatic focus. When we looked at our new energy business, we picked spots where we think, where we thought we could be competitive and deliver returns. So we invested in hydrogen, we invested in carbon capture and storage, and we invested in emerging technologies of which power was one and also geothermal.

So, let's talk about you a little bit, if you're willing to. As I said at the outset, the women are still fairly rare in both the CTO and the CFO position and in the oil industry. So, you multiply all those together, you're kind of a rare bird here. How did you get here? Where did you come from? How did this happen?

Well, I started off with Chevron 28 years ago, as you mentioned, and it's-

Why Chevron? I mean, how did you get to Chevron?

Well, Chevron had a big business in the UK at the time, and I was studying in London, and they were recruiting for their business in the UK.

Yeah.

And so, I was fortunate to get hired by Chevron. And why Chevron? I was interviewing with other companies, but I just got a really good feel for the culture and the people that I met during the recruitment phase. And so, I made the decision, and I think it was a good decision. And I've been very fortunate and I have a huge amount of gratitude for all of the opportunities that Chevron has given me along the way. But in the very beginning, working offshore was such a incredible experience for me because not only was I starting in the business, but I was starting in the field. And I think that experience offshore and seeing how work gets done, and what it takes to safely and reliably produce energy every day was something that just I keep with me every day and all the roles I've had.

That included a tour in Kazakhstan. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like?

Yeah, so I did two stints in Kazakhstan, a short stint in 2014, and that was at the headquarters of the region at the time, which included Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan. And then, I went back in 2015 after a stint in California, where I was working at the corporation in a strategy role. And I initially went into a General Manager of Operations position, and then I eventually led the joint venture that we have, the partnership that we have there, Tengizchevroil. I led the organization for five years.

It's the fate of executives and oil companies to have to go to some of the most God-forsaken places in the world. So, can you tell us a little bit about what it was like living and running a company in Kazakhstan?

Yeah, it was just a fantastic experience. I would say just starting with the asset itself. The Tengi's asset is just a huge part of the portfolio. We have over 30 years of history in the country, and the business, the asset, the operation has grown over time, and it is one of the biggest companies in Kazakhstan. So, it's really tied to the progress of the country. So, it was a role where I felt that every day. I felt the importance, not only of the work that we were doing to operate safely, operate reliably, but the impact it was having on the community and jobs and the country as a whole. And I think that was such an important experience for me, too, because I was always passionate about energy, but it was when I was in Kazakhstan, I really felt how important it was to the lives of the people that we were working with every day. Over time, obviously, we went through COVID as a team, and so that was a challenging experience. But what I learned was just my team was just so capable, and that you can achieve things with great teams. When you're surrounded by great people, you can achieve what you think is impossible. And we went through that and we managed the operation. We managed to keep operating. We had some impact on the project. We managed to keep the critical path going, and that was a big leadership challenge. But what I learned from that is what really mattered was taking care of people and managing the stakeholders.

How would you describe your leadership style?

I would say, one, I'm a team player.

Yeah.

So, I'll always think about the team. That's my style, surrounding myself with a strong team, and seeing my role as a leader to make the most out of them.

When I asked your boss that question in December at our CEO Summit, he said he learned a lot about leadership from "Ted Lasso." Do you watch "Ted Lasso"?

I've watched "Ted Lasso," yeah, yeah.

Do you get leadership lessons from it?

No, I mean, I think I probably get more lessons from my dad, actually-

Really?

Because he was a basketball coach and he was my first coach. So, I learned a lot from him.

You were a basketball player?

Yeah, when I was younger. And so, I think I learned a lot from him, and I also learned, I think, from my mom too. She was humble, but she was driven as well. So, I think I learned a lot from her in terms of taking on a challenge, and being fearless, and always having the opportunity to go home if it didn't work out.

So, every CEO I talk to these days says they're in the midst of a transformation. I don't know if they all really are, but they all really say it. And AI is at the core of that transformation. How is AI gonna transform your business?

In two ways. One, we're gonna leverage it. We are leveraging it to improve performance. And two, how to power it, how to power its growth because it needs energy. So, that's how we think about it, kind of two sides of the equation. On leveraging the technology, we're using AI across the business. We're using it to work safer. We're using it to improve facility performance. We're using it to get more oil out of the ground in a lot of our value chains. We're using it and we've given our employees access to AI tools. And so we're all benefiting from the personal productivity gains from AI. And so, that's happening today. We also have a very focused program on targeting, I would say, big business challenges, moonshots with AI, and how to use AI to solve those problems faster.

Can you give a couple of examples?

I'll give you two. The first one, exploration.

Yep.

So, when you think about the exploration factory, getting the acreage, looking at the seismic, and determining what you're gonna drill or not, then building your queue and then executing your well and drilling a well to see whether you find oil or gas. So, that is the factory, and we're using AI at every stage of the factory to look at the data better, faster, to get better images of the subsurface, and then to essentially develop more leads of exploration prospects than we were ever getting before. So, that's exploration. And then maybe the other example would be in the Permian, and where we're using AI in the Permian to optimize production every day. That would've been more of a manual process in the past, and now, the AI model can run overnight, and we're seeing production optimization improve. We're seeing reliability, new records, and I think it's just the beginning.

And before I let you get back to your dinner, let everyone get back to their dinner, let's bring it back to the CFO. How is the role of the CFO changing in this world, and what's your best advice to the other CFOs who are here tonight?

Well, I see the CFO role being interdisciplinary, really. I mean, there's a lot of it is still about accurate financials. That is absolutely critical. And so, it's job one, but there's a lot of the CFO role that is becoming more strategic. How do we think about AI? How can we use AI to improve the business? How to model that, how to look at investments in AI. And so I think the CFOs are having to be more tech-savvy and learn more and learn faster about some of the technology changes like AI. I also think, CFOs, because of the volatility and the uncertainty, CFOs have much more of a strategic planning role. And I think that's where the work with the CEO and the work with the other members of the leadership team is absolutely critical.

Yeah.

Because there's one thing to develop scenarios in a spreadsheet, but there's another thing to put a risk against all of the scenarios or the investment options, and then to take a view on: Will the execution actually happen? And will we create the value that we think in opportunities?

So, it becomes multidimensional.

So, it becomes multidimensional, and I think it also... And it's always required this, but I think even more so with this uncertainty, it's just bringing all those diverse perspectives together to enhance decision-making.

Yeah.