As a way to adjust oil prices fall, Equinor, Norwegian oil and gas firm is planning to cut jobs at a significant rate in Britain, Canada and the United States. The oil group plans to cut the number of employees in the aforementioned countries by 20% and their numbers of contractors nearly half to secure their profitability on an averagely lower oil prices. The company also disclosed that it will not drill any United States unconventional well this year, even though Equinor already has acreage in the shale formations of Marcellus and Bakken.
The company plans that have been working on since spring, is not involving asset sales, as there will be no change in our acreage portfolio. The action which will be taken now is to secure our profitability in a lower oil price scenario, the company spokesperson added. Some staff cuts would also be applied after the Eagle Ford assets last year’s sales. The specific number of employees and contractors affected are not being disclosed. The oil and gas group had 21,000 employees at the end of 2019, and the U.S office is the second largest after Norway.
The state-owned majority ownership firm has come under surveillance in the Norwegian media in the early 2020 while having mounting losses in the U.S office, with Norway’s Minister of Oil and Energy Tina Bru urging over transparency on the firm’s foreign investments.
Brent crude LCOc1 price had slumped to more than 20-years record lows along with U.S. oil prices turned negative in April due to a sharp fall in demand during the global Coronavirus pandemic. The oil prices since then have recovered and current state are holding near a five-month level as the U.S producers shutdowns their wells at the Gulf of Mexico in anticipation of the Hurricane Laura, and boosted by a drop of the U.S crude oil inventories.
