Exxon closes two Houston offices after exodus of workers

Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to close two office towers in the Houston area after a series of unprecedented job cuts and layoffs over the past year and a half.

Workers from the suburban office buildings known as Hughes Landing in The Woodlands, Texas, will be moved to the oil giant’s main campus in the Houston area, a few miles away, according to an internal memo that Bloomberg had access to.

The downsizing of office space is the latest effort by Exxon CEO Darren Woods to reshape what was once America’s most profitable corporation, after back-to-back drops in crude oil and increased environmental measures called into question I judge the strategy of the company.

“We look forward to bringing our teams together and getting them to collaborate on the Houston campus,” Exxon said in an email Friday.

The oil company announced its first major cuts last year, following the layoff of 1,900 employees as part of a global effort to cut the workforce by 15%. But the Exxon workforce in EE.UU. it’s down further after the last two performance review cycles, people familiar with the matter said earlier this year.

“The evaluation process is not a downsizing exercise,” Exxon said in the statement. “It is an annual process to improve performance. Employees who leave the company through the annual evaluation process may be replaced ”.

Exxon signed the lease at Hughes Landing in 2013. The building had a capacity for 1,400 employees, according to local data from a news report at the time.

After reporting his first annual loss in four decades in 2020, Woods took an aggressive approach to cutting costs in an effort to maintain the company’s $ 15 billion annual dividend.

At the time, the company cut “structural costs” by $ 3 billion in 2020, and Woods expects to double that amount by 2023, he said in a conference call with analysts in July. Encouraged by cuts and rising oil prices, stocks have risen more than 50% this year.