On average, US payroll employees cost CVX about $350,000 per year. So, every 3,000 or so layoffs saves $1 billion per year. That is a magic number in the company and for MW. Every initiative has to meet a billion dollar goal. Our entire global operating cost last year was about $25 billion so cuts can help our opex/bbl a lot.
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The popcorn guy/girl, the site troll was laid off and still trolls this site looking for answers. I think he/she lost everything he had and is broke, and trolls this site all day. He must be really sore because he tries to assign his conditions to an imaginary nemesis, claiming someone is down-voting all of his comments. He or she starts or jumps into threads craving attention, then replies to himself. He addresses his imaginary villains as "popcorn" and that is anyone disagreeing with him and attempts to project his plight onto others. It's really sad. I don't wish that on anyone. It's likely he'll reply to this post in similar fashion since this site is his life, he or she has nothing else.
We will always have layoffs if you consider the annual increases in salary and other benefits. A 7% increase, on average, puts our G&A cost scenario that needs to be cut about every five years. Compared to other companies that might have a raise every three years yet don’t have to cut workforce. The solution is to slow down pay increase or promotions across the board.
@1xtg, you're giving yourself away as an old-timer. 1) We don't drill any dry holes anymore, because a) we don't drill any exploration wells anyways, and b) we only drill Permian gushers. 2) There aren't any leases to miss, as the current administration isn't doing any lease sales (good thing, as we wouldn't be bidding anyways); 3) Incidents can be swept under the rug and quietly paid off (as our former friend AMBU demonstrated), whereas cost savings endear you with the stockholders, pump up your stock options, and get you an interview on CNBC so you can pat yourself on the back in front of a cable audience.
Our cashflow and revenue per employee are lower than ExxonMobil so we have a ways to go on the heavy staffing. They always ran a leaner ship than we did.
By the OPs logic we should layoff the whole company and save 25B a year. Great deal!
It saves payroll...but it can cost in dry holes, incidents, and missed opportunities. The cost of a single extra dry ho-e per year pretty much wipes out that savings. The cost of a missed lease (or worse, a lease commitment in a bad area) is also high. Refining or drilling incidents cost money, reputation, and lives. The risk of all of these increases with an increase in the total work each employee is expected to handle: mistakes are made more frequently and with less oversight as people are rushed. That $1B savings looks a lot less smart when we lose $2B due to not having the enough OC to do the work.
and that sums up winning in ANY environment!