What a firm! Via the AFR:
Origin Energy will cut more than a third of the circa 1600 jobs in its integrated gas business in a dramatic step-up in its efforts to slash costs and protect against swings in commodity prices.
Some 650 jobs will go this year, including 500 by April, according to an internal briefing of staff by Origin on Tuesday morning.
The major rejig follows the completion of the ramp-up of production at the new $25 billion Australia Pacific LNG project in Queensland, now the dominant asset in the division after the sale of Origin’s conventional oil and gas arm, Lattice Energy, to Beach. That $1.585 billion sale is expected to complete as early as Wednesday.
The restructuring will see the business switch from a functionally-led structure to one centred around assets, according to Origin. It is intended to help Origin’s aggressive cost reduction targets, announced in November, involving reducing the oil price at which APLNG breaks even and yields returns for its owners to $US40 per barrel of oil from an expected $US48 a barrel in 2017-18.
Origin is a card carrying member of the Curtis Island Gas Cartel which is presently destroying jobs everywhere east of the Nullibor. The truth is that these job cuts are getting off very light. They should be tenfold as ORG bleeds to death from its horrendous Curtis Island investments.
Instead the wider economy is sharing those job losses as ORG is allowed to charge monopoly rents on gas by the Do-Nothing Malcolm government.
Domestic reservation now!
