MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chevron Corp will lay off about 25% of Noble Energy's employees who joined the oil major after its USD4.1 billion purchase of the smaller rival earlier this month, the company announced, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
A collapse in crude oil prices has forced most oil and gas producers to drastically cut costs by laying off thousands of employees and cutting down on drilling. For many companies, consolidation with larger players at low or no premiums is becoming the only option to survive.
The job cuts, which are on top of Chevron’s plan to reduce 10%-15% of its own workforce, come after the company promised to lower its operating expenses by USD1 billion this year to cope with the downturn. Chevron’s 10%-15% cuts would imply a reduction of between 4,500 and 6,750 jobs, while job cuts at Noble will reduce the total workforce by roughly another 570 positions.
Most of the cuts will take place this year, Chevron said in an email. Chevron’s purchase of Noble boosted its investments in U.S. shale patches of Colorado and the Permian basin and gave the company a foothold in Israel through Noble’s flagship Leviathan project, the largest natural gas field in the eastern Mediterranean.
The company, which took a USD1 billion charge earlier this year to cover severance payments, has also been in the process of asking employees worldwide to reapply for their positions as part of a cost-cutting program, Reuters reported this month.
As part of the plan, Chevron also plans to lay off more than 50 employees starting Dec. 14 in both its Bakersfield production unit and the El Segundo refinery, according to a notice the company sent to the state of California. About 700 employees will lose jobs in Houston starting this month, according to a filing with the Texas state.
Chevron had begun streamlining its operations at the end of 2019 when investor pressure was mounting on oil producers over their abysmal returns. Reuters also reported exclusively on Tuesday that Cenovus Energy Inc plans to cut 20% to 25% of its workforce after it acquires Husky Energy Inc.
As MRC informed earlier, Chevron Lummus Global (CLG) announced they have been awarded a contract by China's largest oil and gas producer and distributor, PetroChina Company Limited, for the supply of its proprietary ISOMIX-e reactor internals for two of their RDS units in Liaoning Province.
As MRC reported earlier, Chevron Phillips Chemical, part of Chevron Corporation, still has not lifted force majeure on its polyethylene (PE) products after assessing the impact of Hurricane Laura to its Gulf Coast PE operations. The force majeure circumstances were declared on 1 September, 2020. CP Chem operates a 420,000 mt/year high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plant in Orange, Texas, and an 855,000 mt/year cracker in Port Arthur. The company plans to minimize the impact of the event and return to full PE deliveries as soon as possible.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,496,500 tonnes in the first eight months of 2020, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of all ethylene polymers increased, except for linear low desnity polyethylene (LLDPE). At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 767,2900 tonnes in the eight months of 2020 (calculated using the formula - production minus exports plus imports - and not counting producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer.
Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.
MRC