>Exxon is certainly content paying for an additional frac on F-1 because it fulfills their financial obligations to the JV.

You seem to have missed the fact that IT WAS EXXON WHO DID NOT WANT TO DO THE FRAC!, meaning your logic has totally backfired.

The contract states that they can't leave until they spent $50 million. By recommending that they don't do the 3rd frac, they were preventing themselves from leaving. The only reason they ended up doing it was because they were most likely outvoted by MOL and Falcon.