Exxon to Slash 14,000 Jobs Worldwide as Oil Demand Drops
ecowatch.com
ecowatch.com
Lots of cowboys with oil wells are still pumping as much as they were before, only getting less dollars per barrel now.
Others are producing less due to the overall decrease in demand, and at the same lower price per barrel, making even less money per month than they were from the same wells.
Either way some have financial structures in place that allow them to continue to provide shareholder returns regardless of the suddenness or severity of the downturn.
Simply because oil is still coming out of the ground.
The difference is just the lower rate the wealth can build.
They might be looking at other things like real estate to put their oil money into, rather than drilling any more wells any time soon.
Other oil producers can be financially extended in ways that make them more sensitive to stress of different degrees, which can stongly magnify a significant upset.
The most unfavorable outlook for producers is when $/BBL x BBLs is declining faster than $/BBL.
Majors can withstand this for long periods of time, which is what they have now done for the good part of a year. They have now accepted a slow increase in $ and BBL from here as predictably too low in light of their encumberances to support going forward with what was considered a full staff a year ago.
They're producing less oil at a lower price and they're going to use fewer people to do it.
Otherwise the shareholders would take too much of a beating.
When balancing the books boils down to headcount versus dividends, it is considered as bad as it gets.
Some could also say major employers have been very generous so far preserving many jobs as long as they have.
Well, Shell actually raised their dividend this week but they're not planning on kicking out as many people either.
US will support oversized oil industry for a long time after renewables are on par with hydrocarbons. A matter of national security.
Not from SARS-CoV-2, which is also directly causing deaths, but from the world's economy collapsing.
But they are mostly the real poor people that Twitterverse doesn't care about, so meh I guess.
Non blog spam -
https://www.reuters.com/article/exxonmobil-layoffs/exxon-to-...
Regrettably there's transition pain for workers in abandoned sectors but other sectors will grow out of this (e.g. deliveries/home office equipping/remote work centres).
This transformation of what work entails, to its essentials, with less office face time, will benefit civilization at large in the long run (Antifragile).
I support financially assisting & retraining displaced workers through this transformation, and am against "bailing out" obsoleted corporate entities.