Fire, Baby, Fire! Chevron On Track To Layoff 20% Of Workforce, ConocoPhillips 25%; Oil Prices Down 20% Since 1/20/25

EDIT

In the months since, he has opened up vast stretches of public lands and U.S. oceans for drilling and reduced the royalty rates that companies must pay for extracting oil and gas in those areas. His administration has also proposed scrapping environmental rules requiring polluters to report their emissions to the EPA, easing regulations for oil and gas wastewater disposal, and rewriting rules to weaken risk management protocols at refineries. And by declaring a national energy emergency, Trump has cleared the way for faster permitting primarily for fossil fuel infrastructure, bringing down review timelines from multiple years to a few weeks. Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, quietly included billions of dollars in new federal tax breaks available to fossil fuel companies. More substantially, it dramatically scaled back federal support for wind and solar energy, as well as electric vehicles — effectively dealing a blow to the newer technologies competing with oil and gas interests.

But the boom times Trump has promised U.S. fossil fuel producers have not materialized. In fact, the industry is headed in the opposite direction: In recent months, Chevron said it would cut as much as one-fifth of its workforce, ConocoPhillips announced plans to let go of up to a quarter of its workforce by the end of the year, and Halliburton began its own round of layoffs. Across the sector, companies have also been reining in spending, cutting capital expenditures, pausing or canceling major projects, and reducing rig counts.

“We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production at current commodity prices,” warned Travis Stice, CEO of Diamondback Energy, a Texas-based oil and gas company, in May. “Today’s prices, volatility, and macroeconomic uncertainty have put [the industry’s] progress in jeopardy.”

Since Trump’s inauguration in January, crude oil prices have dropped nearly 20 percent. That’s left prices below the roughly $65-per-barrel level where most U.S. producers can expect to break even on drilling, and they’re cutting back in anticipation of these unprofitable extraction conditions lasting into 2026. Indeed, the Energy Information Agency projects that oil prices, which currently sit at about $62 per barrel, will drop to $51 per barrel next year.

EDIT

https://grist.org/energy/oil-prices-trump-fossil-fuel-drilling/