Thread regarding Occidental Petroleum Corp. layoffs

Just like as in the Bible, took TEN people to poison an entire country and they spent 40 years in the wilderness.

There were only a handful of people from Apache...

Nearly all of whom were hired straight into high level management roles, including the head of geoscience for the entire company, the subsequent head of geoscience for the entire company, the chief geophysicist, the chief petrophysicist / director of reservoir characterization, the appraisal manager who is now a VP, an exploration manager who is now VP of unconventional technology...that's not even a complete list.

I don't mean to criticize all these guys. Some of them are very talented and made an effort to blend themselves into Oxy. Hopefully they know who they are. But a couple of these guys never even bothered to meet most of the people they were supposed to be leading and giving performance ratings to. A few of them didn't seem interested in years worth of previous work done by Oxy before they forced people to adopt their goofy Apache workflows. It is disingenuous to claim it was "only a handful of people" since that handful of people were handed the keys to the company.

It only takes one dead fish to poison the entire tank. Or in our case, one kayak to k–l the whole reef....one Hawaiian shirt to ruin the entire photo

There were only a handful of people from Apache, don’t see the relevance.

@1unp

My point is the the so-called shale revolution was/is a chimera

Something hoped / wished for that is in fact illusory and/or impossible to achieve.

The shale kings kept promising ever more efficiencies / cost savings in the future that would (after taking on huge debts) finally lead to the long promised free cash flow. Those shale execs and private equity players all took their huge salaries / bonuses / fees up front, while palming off the debts to public funds, pension funds, etc...

They will not pay the price for their greed and stupidity, that will fall on employees, taxpayers, pension funds, etc... as it always does!

The point about UC plays are that you cannot base an entire O&G company on them, particularly if you’re a late buyer.

When O&G prices are high, it’s easy to drill and complete wells quickly to take advantage. When prices are too low, you have to slow down or stop (e.g. DUC’s) and focus on conventional oil and gas plays with lower lifting costs but much slower timelines.

Overall, UC plays are not tenable. They are a mirage and touted by many charlatans.

From 2006 to 2014, 16 publicly traded shale only companies spent $80B MORE than they made from selling oil. The only way to “look” successful is to sell acreage off to latecomer s—ers. Not a long term recipe for success.

In the first half of 2019, when oil prices averaged $55/bbl, only a few top-tier companies were profitable. What about at $25/bbl.

In the five years ending in April, there were 215 bankruptcies for O&G companies, involving $130B in debt.

In the 3Q 2019, 91% of defaulted US corporate debt was because of O&G companies.

Fracking company executives and private equity financiers have made a fortune by touting the myth of US energy independence, but they aren’t the ones to pick up the pieces! How many pension funds hold some of that debt?

No. Oxy UC was called Permian Primary and was an absolute disaster. Completely re-inventing the wheel and blowing millions of $$$ to get where others were. Apache guys at first brought quite a lot of expertise.
The problem always was Oxy never had any appreciation of risk. Still doesn’t. As a CO2 company a bad day in the office, you miss your target by 20%. In UC on a bad day you lose it all.
Intrinsically that’s JB’s biggest problem. As a supply chain guy he thinks “by how far could my people be off on the AFE” and figures it’s +/- 20%.
In reality they’re off by so much more. How come after drilling 70+% ROR wells Resources has still never made a dime.

Did OXY actually have any serious UC expertise before the Apache onslaught? It's a serious question, as I wasn't around prior to it.