Lukoil To Cut 55,000 Jobs

Lukoil, Russia's premier oil producer, has said that it aims to increase profit by $500 million a year starting in two to three years, by cutting the number employed and reducing operating costs through the use of Western style drilling methods. The move will drive up the company's share price, meeting a government demand that Lukoil help the government's planned sale of 5.9 percent of the company this year on the London Stock Exchange. The company may hire Schlumberger or Halliburton, the world's largest oil-services companies, to revitalize output growth. It will fire over twenty thousand of its one hindred and forty thousand workforce during 2002, and also plans a further thirty five thousand job cuts by the year 2010. “We must explore our fields in the most efficient way and care about boosting profit,” said the Lukoil Vice President Leonid Fedun at a briefing. “Lukoil has a very important state task to assist in selling state-owned shares at the maximum possible price.”

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