We all remember the hype that took over the news and Internet following the downsizing that was carried out at Schlumberger. Despite the profits and workforce dwindling, the oil company CEO went home with $18 million for his work in 2015.
Schlumberger is the world’s largest oil field service company and had to lay off 25,000 employees (an equivalent of 20% of its workforce). The profits for the CEO, Paal Kibsgaard, also went down 40% – owing to the prices for black gold continuing their downward slide that had begun about two years ago. The company operates in over 85 countries and was facing quite a situation.
The oversupply of oil managed to bring the $100 per barrel price from 2014 down to $33.01 and the cherry on top was the $232 million fine that company had to pay because of violation of sanctions against Iran and Sudan. It was fined by the Justice Department, just in case you’re wondering.
And yes, despite all these factors, Kibsgaard’s compensation has only dropped 1.1% from 2014. In numbers, it went from $18.5 million to $18.3 million. Kibsgaard is a Norwegian has been serving as the CEO since 2011. He was formerly working for Exxon Mobile. Last month, he mentioned another 10,000 job cuts apart from the ones in 2015 and said that he was ‘optimistic’ that layoffs were finally over.
The stock for Schlumberger that is listed on the NYSE and has a US HQ in Houston, saw a rise of 0.26% this Friday.
The only goal for him is to get maximum profit with any cost. They face lots of lawsuits, mainly for unpaid overtime but they do not care since these lawsuits are in countries where there is big corruption, since they contract services from local politicians and managers of control authorities. They lay off only the the ones that resisted to their constraint to resign. Some examples are in Poland, Romania, Angola, but in Angola they had to hire back local employees because authorities force them to do that. Above these lay offs they cut bonuses and benefits as well.
Oh I get it. Rich people are evil but poor people are good. Income disparity is the root of all evil. Thanks for your enlightening article.
This shows how CEO respects Engineers, and all others skilled people, Its just expense to generate profit, so next time you get your salary change make sure fair share goes for you 😉
I concur with Paul. Disappointing
PSA: This article, as does the odd items from Japan article from 2-3 days ago, does not fit your websites theme. Please do not lose sight of what draws your readers to your site, amazing engineering feats. The soapbox for business news, gross entertainment, or other non-engineering/science or math related topics only serves to water down your site’s value to it’s readers. I’d much rather have 1 worthy article every 2 days then 20 junk articles every day. If this trend continues, for too long and you deviate from your stated goal, I will unsubscribe from your site’s content, and highly suspect that many others will subtly do the same.
Agree 100%!
If they post 1 article in 2 days then how will they make any money to sustain or improve. Junk content is part of the free Internet. You should take your time to slice it off and focus on what you like IMHO.