Australia’s Woodside to make 300 job cuts amid oil price crash

Australia’s largest independent oil and gas producer Woodside Petroleum has said it will make around 300 job cuts as a result of the crash in commodity prices.

The latest move comes as the company prepares itself to face the worst conditions ‘experienced’ in the oil and gas (O&G) sector in decades, Reuters reported.

According to AFR, the 300 redundancies at Woodside are the ‘first cuts there involving permanent employees’ after it laid off hundreds of contractor jobs in Western Australia in March this year.

Reuters quoted Woodside spokeswoman as stating: “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.”

In Australia itself, Chevron said it is set to cut around 25% of its staff, ExxonMobil is seeking volunteers to quit the company, and Oil Search has already axed a third of its workforce.

In July, Woodside Petroleum planned to book impairments of $4.37bn after tax due to a decrease in crude prices as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In June, the company reportedly announced that it may bid for Chevron’s stake in North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Australia.