Woodside cuts 300 jobs as oil slump bites

Woodside Petroleum has cut 300 jobs or 8 per cent of its workforce after the oil rout forced it to delay projects and trim spending.

Woodside Petroleum is shedding up to 8 per cent of its workforce in the face of low oil prices.

Woodside Petroleum has cut 300 jobs or 8 per cent of its workforce after the oil rout forced it to delay projects and trim spending.

The bulk of the roles are understood to be office-based positions in the company’s Perth headquarters.

“Woodside has undertaken an organisational review to identify the company’s workforce needs going forward in this challenging business environment, resulting in the difficult decision to reduce the size of the workforce by around 300 positions,” a Woodside spokeswoman said.

“The organisational review follows decisions in March to cut spending and delay growth projects in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and lower oil prices. This is a reduction in Woodside’s direct employee workforce.”

Woodside in March delayed its major LNG projects Scarborough and Browse worth a combined $US32bn ($44bn) and slashed its 2020 spending in half to protect the company against a savage fall in oil prices and fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

“This decision allows the Company to manage through these challenging times while continuing to maintain safe and reliable operations,” the Woodside spokeswoman said.

The LNG giant also stood down 500 contractors from its North West Shelf and Pluto LNG plants in WA in March, unions claimed, although Woodside would not confirm how many workers had been lost and said jobs had not been cut at Pluto. Some of those contractors have since been rehired.

Rival gas producers have also axed staff with Chevron cutting up to 600 roles in May and Oil Search slashing nearly a third of its workforce in July.