Thread regarding Marathon Oil Corp. layoffs

All the MA activity and us not being involved speaks to:
1) Our portfolio has little to no upside. No one wants what we've got.
2) Our BD group cannot find value or transact even with in an extremely suppressed price environment.
3) Our complete waste of a decent balance sheet and credit in a buyers market.

This is the reality check that our management seems to ignore. We are still in a position to make it as an EP, but we can't sit on our hands or just wait for higher prices.

Kodak, Blockbuster, Yahoo, Sears, Kmart, Toys R US, Nokia, Palm, Blackberry...their leadership team failed to recognize their industry was changing in front of them and failed to act. Is MRO next?

There is one common denominator behind all these bad deals, Kimberly Hill. She was in charge of BD at the time off all the bad acquisitions. Her best buddy P-dubs knew the heat was on and had her promoted and moved to VP of land where she now sits shielded from the questions of, why did we do these stupid deals?

@2krm+18oXv6Ph You are right in the fact that MRO overpaid for every shale they acquired. However, there are no more shales to be found in the US at that cheap price. REX is a waste of capital. Ultradeep LA Chalk and Delaware Woodford will not be the future unless oil hits $100/bbl. If that happens, plenty of other tier 3 areas become economic before then.

MRO's biggest problem is inventory. I say this as someone who left voluntarily and has been at multiple companies since evaluating shales across the US. MRO's inventory is non-existent and they blew their capital on Payrock and Quantum Delaware sh–cos. Anadarko, bought. Noble, bought. WPX, bought. Concho, bought. Parsley, bought. BHP shale, bought. MRO has already been skipped over numerous times. There is no value proposition in managing the decline with a complex set of assets.

When I joined MRO a few years ago, part of the sales pitch was that business development was moving towards a PE model. They'd take risks on buying early into plays and then hand all that inventory over to the assets. Sure, not everything would work out, but this would prevent us from having to pay heavy premiums to enter basins. It would also solve the perpetual shale problems of high production declines and dwindling inventory.

This is our biggest failing as a company. We cannot quickly screen, test, and evaluate new opportunities. What do PW and REX actually do for the company?

Here’s the honest truth and it’s going to hurt. EF might have another 3-5 years before the decline curves are so steep we can’t hype it any longer. ORB has been finished for a long time. We have tried to unload many times and no buyer is willing to bite due to the pure c-ap that asset is. Permian is not really Permian. Our position out there is total c-ap that we way over paid for. That leaves us with Bakken and EG. those are the only two assets in the company that can actually make us money going forward.

idk, maybe it's all part of that same ton I keep hearing about:
1) Permian and ORB have a ton of potential waiting to be tapped into - thanks new type curves
2) EF and Bak have tons of running room left - Hello redev
3) REX plays have a ton of upside - think of all those sticks we added last year in TX
4) Planning is adding a ton of value - can I get the well list for Enersight run 4.2 scenario b mid?
5) OP's mom is tons of fun

It seems super odd that you would say that since there are not tons of jobs posted

the posts shown in google search are the job posted almost two years ago, not current.

Do a google search for marathon oil jobs. There are at least 20 posted in the last 30d. About a quarter of those are engineering jobs for EF and Permian.

how many is a ton? i see 3 jobs posted.

Not odd at all; it proves what’s been said here all along—April’s mass layoff exercise was the companies PC way of trimming the unneeded “fat”. Now they’re backfilling positions with people they actually want on staff.