Singapore (January 25, 2002) - Good morning ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us on this important day. My colleague Stan Tebbe, Regional Director of ExxonMobil Chemical Asia Pacific, and I extend a special welcome to our guest-of-honour, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. We're very honoured to have him here today. We'd also like to welcome US Ambassador Frank Lavin and Dan Sanders, President of ExxonMobil Chemical Company.

I'm also pleased that we have some of the key people who have made today's dedication of the Singapore Chemical Plant possible: the members of the Economic Development Board, the JTC Corporation, our customers, and our employees.

ExxonMobil is the single-largest foreign investor in Singapore and Singapore is the Asia Pacific regional headquarters for our Downstream and Chemical businesses. Our combined businesses employ more than 2,700 people.

In addition to the Singapore Chemical Plant, or SCP, we own and operate a 580,000-barrel-per-day refinery here in Jurong. In fact, the refinery is ExxonMobil's largest refining complex in the world. This operation is fully integrated with SCP, together forming our largest integrated manufacturing site in Asia.

Singapore has more than 80 Esso and Mobil stations along with two lube oil blending plants. Our customers also know us for supplying LPG to their homes and businesses.

Anyone who has friends or family working at the Singapore Chemical Plant will know that we're extremely proud of this facility. We're eager to talk about its capabilities. But before I do that, I'd like to focus on the most important factor in our success: our people.

More than 7,000 people worked to create this highly sophisticated chemical plant, and now 600 employees keep it running smoothly by focusing on continuously improving its operations. We have a world-class group of people here, each with individual talents and capabilities. And while it is a pleasure to work with such a talented, dedicated and diverse group, what is really exciting is to observe them bringing these talents together in a high-performing team.

We recognise that the exceptional quality and talent of our workforce is a valuable competitive edge. Their skills and energy will move us forward to delight our customers and capture new opportunities. In short, they are and will continue to be the key to our success.

Commitment to safety, health and the environment is one of ExxonMobil's core values. Regrettably, on December 9, 2000 we had an incident here that cost the lives of two of our valued employees and seriously injured another. We never want anyone else to go through losing a colleague, a friend, a daughter or son to an occupational accident. That's why SCP is committed to be the safest operation in the industry. We're taking lessons learned from throughout the ExxonMobil network so we can further strengthen our safety procedures, and together with the Ministry of Manpower we're sharing this information with other companies in our industry and across Singapore. We're determined to do everything we can to ensure that incidents such as the one that occurred here does not happen again.

You might ask, how was a facility like this built in just four years? The answer: trust, cooperation and global teamwork. We started building components for SCP in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and Europe while most of what we now call Jurong Island was underwater. Here, I need to recognise the entrepreneurship of Philip Yeo who managed to sell us land that was underwater. We brought in component parts from more than 37 countries to build this plant, and workers from more than 40. Why is that important? The process of designing and constructing SCP illustrates one of the key benefits ExxonMobil Chemical delivers to our customers: we leverage our global capabilities to serve your local market. We like to call this benefit "Global yet local for you."

This plant really is a technological marvel. SCP's four units deliver a wide range of petrochemical products to our customers. Its vital statistics are impressive: a steam cracker that produces 800,000 tons-per year of ethylene, 430,000 tons-per-year of propylene, and other products for several downstream chemical units in and around Singapore. A 480,000 ton-per-year polyethylene unit, the largest single reactor unit of its type in the world, a 315,000 ton-per-year polypropylene unit, a 150,000 ton-per-year oxo alcohol unit and a 155-megawatt co-generation unit that provides power to both the refinery and the chemical plant.

But what interests me more than the story of its design and construction is considering the three supporting factors that enable SCP to deliver to our customers:

• A substantial and reliable supply of products from our own backyard: Singapore's world-class refineries.

• The industry's leading customer supply chain system, which will effectively shorten delivery times and improve service levels.

• And an excellent on-the-ground sales team and a well-established marketing organisation that's been in the region since the early 60s.

We're already delivering our quality SCP products to the marketplace:

• Our polypropylene is enhancing the durability of auto bumpers, making baby nappies softer, keeping potato chips crisper and building washing machines and refrigerators.

• Many of the products you pick up in your local supermarkets are wrapped in SCP polyethylene film -- from bread and vegetables to detergents and health products.

• Products from our oxo-alcohol plant are basic components in products ranging from toys to the insulation for our cables and wires, floor tiles and gloves. You'll see many of these goods on display at our exhibits.

We hope that your time with us today will enable you to see the current strengths and future possibilities of this facility and our people, and that you leave as excited as we are about our opportunities to grow profitably together.