Thread regarding Chevron Corp. layoffs

Exxon and Shell did the exploration work to identify the basin and drill locations. Shell had a string of dry holes elsewhere and decided to exit this play before the first exploration well. Hess took over their position. They were lucky.

@111 One must be partially woke themselves to identify woke in others or, perhaps, it’s just empty ranting from someone shouting at the TV all day from the BarcaLounger.

Sounds like Chevron isn't the great company some on Wall Street think. Probably due to their California lineage. Woke Wall Street wants a progressive US mega cap oil co. They can't accept XOM (who is running rings around CVX).

Hess wasn’t responsible for Guyana Exploration success.

He’s nothing more than a poor showman. I once had respect. Now, he’s just a scripted and overpaid executive that has lost his way. I am still astounded that he cooked a deal with the board to stay on past 65. We are stuck with him. We should have kept NH….would have given MW a run for (much) money!

Things haven’t changed. Having worked at Gulf ten Chevron. The difference was amazing. Chevron management was always asking for one more piece of data, and hoped that they the could use it to ki-l the project.
Also, the point about moving people was spot on. Pity the poor geologist who drilled a well left by someone else and was a dry hole. Guess who got the blame?

No matter how skilled your exploitation team, without managers with the courage to accept the risk of acquiring regional seismic data and drilling some holes, there won't be much new in the pipeline. Talk is cheap, and endless meetings just delay progress. Management is enamored with the risk-free factory model, but as mature legacy development wanes and prime shale acreage is depleted, they had better recall the era when major capital exploration projects took multiple dry holes to delineate and 10 years to yield production. AI and wishful thinking aside, ya can't change the laws of physics

As someone who spent time in two other companies before joining Chevron I noticed four things that hurt Chevron the most that I wished someone had told me about before joining.

One, my BU is over staffed and our reorg did not do a single thing to address that problem. It take five people to sc--w in a lightbulb and because of this work structure we spend a lot of time waiting on others. One person to buy the lightbulb, one to bring the ladder, one to take off the light bulb, one to place the light bulb, and one to dispose of the broken light bulb.

Two, the PDC process and people changing roles every two to three years is bonkers. There always seems like someone comes in and has to be trained to do the work, like getting the right light bulb or having to learn where the ladder is placed. And those that get the hang of things are then on their way out to another role.

Three, there is a lot of process just to do something. We have to set up a plan to change the light bulb. Then present it to managers like four times to make sure they agree. I have seriously regurgitated the same set of slides kfor a project this last year in part of this process of approvals. Only after recycling the same presentation over and over (after changing the name of the milestone meeting and date) do they agree that we can change the light bulb. But for only one light bulb, if we need to change another similar light bulb we will have to present everything to managers again and recycle the same presentations but now make sure we specify that this is a different, but very similar light bulb we are changing. And then we congratulate ourselves for getting this project through the weeks-long process, meeting or exceeding or goals to put on our PMP, while the actual work took a couple of days to do.

And four, management takes forever to make a decision. We just need to change a light bulb... not wait on whether a small light bulb is in the budget for this year or if this is the right light bulb. Then spend another month just making the approvals. No one here ever takes responsibility for anything, and when they do they are probably getting ready to move to their next role.

SO Mikey doesn’t like Xploration results……yet doesn’t change the head,LS, so…….hmmm…….rather than act tough, he instead talks tough through the media vs. with the leader(s) of Xplo……whatever Mikey Mouse……

So many of us have tried to challenge conventional thinking for years and always run up against our leadership. Why do they always think bringing it in from the outside will be successful where our own people have got nothing but brick walls?

The reality is that Hess was no better a successful explorer than CVX, arguably worse. They tagged along into Guyana via operator XOM and were beneficiaries of predecessor Amerada’s 60 yr buy and hold strategy with the Bakken, and even then did not start development until the sell side analysts nudged them forward.

CVX does exploration, who knew?

@ah The incompetency doesn't end at just Exploratory management, but extends to the PE Sponsor lead as well. Totally clueless. So if management doesn't run the team into the ground, then the responsible sponsor will make sure it is staffed with incapable people. This guy couldn't produce a single coherent thought in the years that I worked with him but he keeps moving up in the ranks. SMH.

Long term beaten-down Chevron “explorer” here. This will be interesting to watch. Only one new non-exploration leader was brought in, CP, and the usual suspects have already been gaslighting him almost from day 1. I suspect he lasts 6-12 months before he asks to eject from this chaos into Upstream. The legacy Exp leadership will box him out to retain control of their winning ways.

It doesn't matter how "good" the Hess exploration team is, if you suffocate it with Chevron's incompetent exploration management, they will fail. The truly "good" will test the waters with Chevron, see how little risk they're willing to take, how little drilling budget they have, and jump ship to another company within 6 months.

Former NBL here - nearly every good idea we had was corrupted by the institutional incompetence and value negative processes. Godspeed Hess.

I thought AI was going to find all the oil for cheap

I wished they could replace our management team as well...

Maybe they can simply replace our exploration team altogether.