Equinor closes office for land investment in the US – E24

– We have decided to close the office in Austin and gather all the business in Houston, says the spokesman Erik Haaland in the company to Dagens Næringsliv.

The Austin, Texas office has about 250 employees. They learned of the cut plans in August, which will also affect Canadian colleagues.

– The same goes for Calgary, where we moved the main business to St. Johns in Canada, Haaland tells E24.

Additionally, it says Equinor expects to finalize final packages for “several hundred employees” in November.

But Equinor won’t say anything about how many employees will have to leave the company.

– We will not give exact figures. What we have indicated is that the number of recruits in the US and the UK will be cut in half. At the same time, the number of jobs in the same countries will be reduced by an average of about 20 percent, Haaland says.

Follow the fall in price and demand

The company is reducing its onshore activity in the United States. The activity in the Eagle Nord area was sold before Christmas last year. Additionally, Equinor has decided not to drill any more wells this year at the Bakken field in North Dakota.

– This is a process that began this spring. It is a reaction to market conditions that we have seen with a drop in oil prices and a drop in demand as a result of covid19, Haaland tells E24.

In August, Equinor announced the big plan of cuts for the three mentioned countries.

– There are different deadlines for this process. When it comes to Canada, we haven’t gotten that far in the process. We also look at the level of staff there. But first and foremost, it is the United States and the United Kingdom.