Santos starts new round of cuts

A new wave of redundancies, adding to 1050 in the last 18 months, has begun under Kevin Gallagher.

In August, Mr Gallagher said job cuts earlier in the year were just the start. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe.

Santos has started what is believed to be more widespread cuts under new managing director Kevin Gallagher, adding to more than 250 cuts at the embattled oil and gas company in the first half of the year and 800 the previous year.

The Adelaide company, which is struggling under low oil prices and debt taken on to build LNG projects, is putting in place a new operating model to make sure it can survive low oil prices.

In August, after six months in the role, Mr Gallagher said job cuts earlier in the year were just the start and had been achieved by just a high-level organisational restructure.

This afternoon, a spokesman confirmed the next round of cuts had started.

“As this model is refined we are removing duplication and increasing efficiency across the operations,” he said.

“We are not providing redundancy figures as this is a rolling process but we will provide an update at our investor day in December.”

Last month, sources told The Australian’s DataRoom column that this round of redundancies could see 600 more jobs go from the company, with retrenchments focused on operational positions in the Cooper Basin and in Queensland.