Chevron CEO says company is targeting $6-8b in free cash flow growth next year

Chevron is positioned to increase its free cash flow by $6 billion to $8 billion by next year, and reduce expenses by "a couple billion dollars," said Chevron CEO Michael Wirth on Wednesday.

The number two US oil producer expects results to benefit from the start of new or expanded oil production projects in Kazakhstan, US shale and the offshore US Gulf of Mexico.

Oil production in the Gulf of Mexico will grow to 300,000 barrels per day by 2026, up from 200,000 last year, Wirth said in remarks at a conference in Miami.

In August, Chevron produced its first oil from a pioneering US Gulf of Mexico deepwater field under extreme pressures.

At its peak, the project will pump up to 75,000 barrels of oil per day and the company has two other offshore projects that will follow.

The global LNG market could be slightly oversupplied in the back half of this decade, he also said on Wednesday.

Wirth said the US could see a build-out of natural gas power generation plants to support energy demand from the growing number of data centers for artificial intelligence, which will likely come before the growth of nuclear energy.

"Nuclear is probably a decade away from most of the people I talk to that are working on those technologies ... so the good news is America is blessed with an abundance of natural gas," Wirth said.

Chevron is prepared for a "prompt close" later this year of its $53 billion deal to acquire oil producer Hess Corp, Wirth said.

The merger has been approved by shareholders and US regulators, but stalled by a contract arbitration challenge by Exxon Mobil and CNOOC, Hess' partners in a Guyana oil production joint venture.

"We continue to be very confident in Hess' position in the arbitration and we feel like they clearly have the right side of this argument," Wirth said.

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Houston, Editing by Nick Zieminski)