Oil Major Exxon Considers Global Job Cuts

ExxonMobil is considering cutting jobs worldwide on a country-by-country basis, a spokesman for the U.S. oil supermajor told Reuters on Wednesday, after the firm began a voluntary redundancy program for its employees in Australia.  

ExxonMobil Australia said on Wednesday that it is offering voluntary redundancies to all its employees in Melbourne, Gippsland, Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth, following “an extensive review of the company’s current and future project work.”

“This program will ensure the company manages through these unprecedented market conditions,” ExxonMobil Australia said.

Commenting on the plan, spokesman Casey Norton at Exxon’s headquarters in Irving, Texas, told Reuters in an email:

“We have evaluations underway on a country-by-country basis to assess possible additional efficiencies to right-size our business and make it stronger for the future.”

So far, Exxon has refrained from job cuts after oil prices collapsed and oil supermajors started losing money and cutting capital expenditures (capex).

But others, like BP, for example, have already announced massive job cuts. BP is cutting 10,000 jobs, or around 15 percent of its workforce, as it looks to cut costs amid the oil price crash resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, chief executive Bernard Looney said in June.

Also in June, Exxon was said to be preparing to let go between 5 percent and 10 percent of its US-based employees subject to performance reviews.

In August, ExxonMobil notified employees it would start suspending the employer match to the retirement savings plans of its employees in October.

“The company intends to suspend the company match contribution to the U.S. Exxon Mobil Savings Plan for all employees covered by the Savings Plan, effective around Oct. 1, 2020,” the supermajor said.

After the oil price crash, Exxon posted its second consecutive quarterly loss and the worst loss in its modern history, but it is not cutting its dividend and is seeking cuts elsewhere. European majors such as Shell, BP, Eni, and Equinor have already slashed their dividends after the oil price collapse, but Exxon, and the other U.S. supermajor Chevron, are not sacrificing their dividends.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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