A Maersk Drilling rig – Image Credit: Maersk Drilling Offshore drilling company Maersk Drilling has announced a new wave of layoffs and has revised its financial guidance for 2020, citing oil and gas companies’ budget cuts and delays and cancellations in offshore drilling tenders.
As previously reported, Maersk Drilling in April said it would lay off around 250-300 people in its North Sea crew pool, and mothball several drilling rigs due to the effects of low oil price on offshore drilling activities.
The Danish offshore driller on Thursday announced a new round of cuts, this time onshore.
"…the need for onshore support is expected to be adversely impacted by the reduced offshore activity. Therefore, Maersk Drilling today announces that it intends to reduce its onshore organization in the Danish headquarters and offices globally and that steps have been taken to initiate consultations with employee representatives and trade unions where such consultations are required locally."
Maersk Drilling expects that the process would lead to a total of 150-170 onshore redundancies globally.
CEO Jorn Madsen said: "With the outbreak of COVID-19 and the lower oil prices we are facing an unprecedented reality with significant implications for our business. Our ambition is to remain a leading company in our industry, and in order to safeguard that position we need to adapt our cost structure to the current business environment. This means that we need to take steps to reduce the workforce, which is unfortunate, not least in the light of the great efforts by our competent and dedicated employees, also over the past critical months.”
Revised guidance
The company had in March revised its profitability guidance for 2020 for EBITDA before special items to USD 325-375m, however, another revision came Thursday.
"Since [the March revision], oil and gas companies have announced further reductions in spending budgets and sanctioning of new projects and ongoing tenders have been postponed or canceled. Further, certain existing contracts have been renegotiated, suspended, or terminated."
"Consequently, Maersk Drilling has re-assessed the commercial and operational assumptions underlying the financial forecasts for 2020 and revises its guidance for 2020 for EBITDA before special items to USD 250-300m (previous guidance of USD 325-375m). The guidance for capital expenditures for 2020 is revised to around USD 150m (previous guidance of USD 150-200m)," Maersk Drilling said.
The company said that the revised guidance reflected expected adjustments to the existing contracts based on current customer dialogues, no additional contracts with financial impact […]