PETRONAS cuts under 1000 jobs

PETRONAS has announced it will cut hundreds of jobs as part of an efficiency drive following the fall in oil prices.

The Malaysian state energy major has resisted making cuts until now, despite large-scale layoffs elsewhere, but says it will now make “under 1,000” workers redundant as part of efforts to make the business leaner and more efficient. Announcing its results yesterday, PETRONAS announced that depressed oil prices had contributed to revenue dropping 25% year-on-year in 2015.

“PETRONAS would like to thank its leaders and employees who will no longer continue in the organisation’s journey for their invaluable contribution and wishes them every success for the future,” the company said in a statement. As of the end of 2014, Petronas employed just under 51,000 people groupwide, according to its latest financial report.

Layoffs were expected after details of an internal memo from the company’s CEO Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin were made public by the Wall Street Journal in January. Wan Zulkiflee, an Honorary Fellow of IChemE, cautioned that there would be organisational changes as well as cuts of up to RM50bn (US$12bn) in capex and opex over the next four years.

Wan Zulkiflee confirmed yesterday that these cuts will impact planned projects, though gave little detail.
“At this point, we have taken the decision to re-phase the PETRONAS Floating LNG 2 project, to be commissioned at a later date than originally planned,” he said.

In January, the agency managing the development of a massive new oil and gas hub in Johor – where PETRONAS is building a world-scale refining and petrochemicals complex – said it was struggling to secure downstream investment in the project, though added PETRONAS had not indicated plans to slow its own investment.