MOSCOW (MRC) -- Marathon Oil Corp has laid off around 100 U.S. employees, or about 5% of its total workforce, a company spokeswoman told Reuters, days after the oil and gas producer cut salaries for top executives and board members, said Reuters.
Although oil prices have raced back above the pre-pandemic level of $60 per barrel in recent months, producers are focusing on improving balance sheets instead of raising output, as demand forecasts hinge on vaccine rollouts.
Marathon Oil's spokeswoman said the company's actions were part of its "commitment to continuously optimize our cost structure."
It had about 2,000 full-time employees worldwide at the end of 2019, according to its latest available employment figures, with 74% working in the United States.
World oil demand in 2021 will rebound more slowly than previously thought, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said on Thursday, adding to a series of downgrades as the impact of the pandemic lingers.
The company is expected to join other U.S. oil producers in posting an annual loss when it reports fourth-quarter results on Feb. 17.
As MRC informed previously, Marathon Petroleum Corp plans to operate the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) at its 585,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas. The 140,000 bpd FCC restarted on Sunday, 12 April, after repairs following a March 23 brief power outage that shut the unit.
Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, last month, Russian companies actually kept the November volume of external PP purchases, imports amounted to 21,300 tonnes. Thus, overall PP imports into Russia reached 224,000 tonnes in January-December 2020, compared to 182,800 tonnes a year earlier. Purchasing of all grades of propylene polymers in foreign markets increased, with homopolymer PP imports accounting for the most noticeable rise.
MRC