Looking to stem the tide of slipping oil prices, ExxonMobil is taking both a long- and short-term view on natural gas exploration.

Exxon needs another revenue option, as the steady slide in oil prices has taken a toll on the company’s stock price. No investor should make big portfolio decisions based on one week’s worth of trading activity, but the past few days haven’t been kind to Exxon shareholders.

The company’s share price fell from $82 per share to $78 per share from May 29 to June 4. From March 15, when Exxon stock hovered around $87 per share, to June 4, when the stock finished the day under $78, the company who made the motto “put a tiger in your tank” famous has left shareholders in the tank -- with the tiger.

But you can’t really fault Exxon management. The company, like most big oil producers, is primarily at the mercy of global oil prices and right now oil bears are sharpening their teeth on the ankles of companies like Exxon. Nobody knew it then, but August 28, 2011, was the high water mark for oil prices, when oil was selling at $109 per barrel.

At the end of the day on June 4, oil prices finished at $84 per barrel, a $25 drop that few money managers, let alone oil company managers, saw coming.

According to the Wall Street analytical firm Shinesrooms.com, the news on oil prices could have been worse, save for a softer U.S. currency, and political turmoil in the Middle East, which have kept regional oil prices higher.

“The integrated oil and gas industry, which features companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., has had a positive first quarter in 2012, despite a number of headwinds,” the firm says in a May 30 research note. “Oil prices have been declining due to concerns over an economic slowdown in China as well as problems stemming from the Eurozone crisis. However, trouble stemming from Iran and other oil producing countries in the Middle-East has helped to offset some of the headwinds, and global prices have also recently been buoyed by a weaker U.S. dollar.”

With a nod at lower oil prices, Exxon is looking to pick up some of the slack in natural gas.

One concrete clue comes from Exxon’s announcement last week that it plans to launch a sweeping petrochemical expansion at its suburban Houston energy facility, called Baytown. The firm will build a new ethane operation, including a pair of polyethylene production lines near an Exxon plastics plant in Mont Belvieu. Company officials say the expansion should be completed by 2016, and expect the expansion to capitalize on low shale gas exploration costs.

Zacks Investment Research describes Baytown as the largest petroleum and petrochemical facility in the U.S. “Its steam cracker is able to tackle up to 1.5 million tons per year and provide 650,000 tons of feedstock to the new production lines at the Mont Belvieu plastics unit,” says Zacks in a recent research report. Zacks also calls Exxon the biggest producer of natural gas in the U.S., following its $25 billion buyout of XTO Energy in 2010.

The Baytown expansion is not a one-off. In April, Exxon signed off on a natural gas exploration deal with ConocoPhillips, BP, and TransCanada that will “commercialize” natural gas fields in Alaska’s North Slopes region, which holds some 35 trillion cubic feet of discovered natural gas, Exxon says. The partners expect the deal to yield abundant loads of liquefied natural gas, which the consortium will export from south-central Alaska to what Exxon calls an “evolving global market” for natural gas.

Zacks says Exxon’s expanded efforts in the natural gas market should be a winner for the company, but it won’t be easy.

“Exxon remains enthusiastic about the abundance of North American natural gas resources and believes that it can sustain domestic energy needs as well as export to the international market,” says Zacks in its report. “ExxonMobil’s Gulf Coast agenda and Baytown, are well equipped to meet domestic requirements. It can also cost-effectively export chemical production to South America, Europe and Asia Pacific.”

The New York-based analytical firm notes that a supply glut, fueled mostly by technological advancements in hydraulic fracturing, has driven natural gas prices downward, although natural gas prices have come back somewhat. Natural gas is currently trading at about $2.40 MMbtu in early June -- an increase of 1.92% compared with April -- after rising to $2.70 in May. The April number was a “decade low level”, says Zacks.

The firm currently has a neutral call on XOM. “Despite the collapse in natural gas prices, Exxon expects unconventional gas to play a dominant role in future supplies owing to the rapid decline in conventional production,” Zacks says.

With Exxon seriously planning to export liquefied natural gas to foreign bourses, and with natural gas prices down 20% so far in 2012, XOM is looking to build on its 2010 purchase of XTO and cement its status as the No. 1 natural gas producer in the U.S.

With oil prices low in the tank, Exxon’s timing is hardly coincidental. The faster investors start thinking of Exxon as a natural gas and oil company, the better they’ll understand the operating philosophy going forward for one of the world’s most prominent integrated energy companies.