Oil major ConocoPhillips said it expects to spend aggressively in coming years to expand refining capacity while remaining committed to returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share buyback programmes.

In an analysts’ meeting in New York, senior executives laid out their corporate and financial plans for the coming years, just weeks after the company reported third-quarter profit of $3.8 billion, boosted by record-high crude oil prices in global markets.
Conoco said it expects much of its growth to come from its own initiatives rather than an active slate of acquisitions.
“We’d like to think we have pretty aggressive organic growth in the company, both upstream and downstream,” chief executive Jim Mulva told analysts. As part of that, the company said it would spend as much as $5 billion between 2006 and 2011 on increasing refinery capacity and utilisation worldwide.
For next year, Mulva said the company’s capital spending would probably be closer to $12 billion than the $11 billion that has been forecast.
Those figures factor in spending related to Conoco’s stake in Russian producer LUKoil, which is currently 14.8 per cent and which Conoco plans to raise to 20 per cent.