My guess is XOM research and engineering (EMRE) as research and engineering isn’t needed to run the manufacturing sites. Haven’t seen anything come out of EMRE.
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How are we going to divest kearl? Will anyone buy are non-gold plated assets?
Take a look at what they've divested in the past for a clue for where the changes will be. Upstream assets with no paired refinery, downstream areas with poor demand/export prospects and teams where pay is notably higher than peers.
- so basically everywhere will take a haircut except the gold plated upstream assets and the key refinery hubs.
Upstream is going to be hit very hard by this.
For at least 25 years, I've heard rumors that the company is going to contract out R&D, or sell off its Downstream operations. I take no pleasure in this (because I was always proud of being part of EM R&D), but having worked at Clinton for a few years, I can honestly say that it is heading the way of handling all R&D through 3rd parties.
CSR is increasingly reliant on working with universities, specialist companies and consortia. There is actually very little useful work (really only related to processing crude, fuels and lube streams) that is conducted in-house - this only delivers high value (through licensing) perhaps 5% of the time, but that's enough to keep paying for this activity. However, if the company were to decide to rely on licensing 3rd party catalysts, or get out of refining altogether, it wouldn't need this kind of R&D support. Once it realizes that algae and carbon sequestration are not economically viable and ineffective for PR purposes, these programs will be dropped. The Chemicals organization are conducting more and more of their own work as well, because they realized that Clinton is too slow and too expensive and things have been getting worse every year. In fact, there is a significant number of employees who think that the only reason for combining Clinton and Paulsboro operations into one site was to cover the runaway costs of operating Clinton (which means more Product Development money is being spent on overheads at Clinton and subsidizing CSR activities).
Fuels and lubes development programs have slowed down and become more expensive since moving from Paulsboro to Clinton. Lack of foresight by the Planning Department (I know - what a surprise!) resulted in compressing blending and testing operations into available lab spaces that are far too small. This meant that some tests were not installed and need to be sent out to 3rd party labs, many of the blending materials are stored in a off-site warehouse (some 30 miles away) and need to be shipped in when needed. For the first 18 months, there was a huge problem in samples being sent to the wrong labs, and the requestor or owner not being notified or its arrival. I suspect these were the main reasons for the Business forcing Product Development to use a different model for their programs, which pushes a larger fraction of them out to the additive suppliers to own and run. The upshot of this will be that the company will need fewer employees to work on fuels and lubes R&D, fewer lab technicians, less lab space.
I predict that in the next 5-10 years, R&D activities at Clinton will be severely reduced along with a significant reduction in staff, and that the remaining R&D functions transferred to Houston. Will the CSR VP be the last remaining "Fool on The Hill"?
Exploration - their record proves that leadership of UBD, especially those that were EMUV, have consistently failed and that the army of expensive geoscientists are not really needed.
The boondoggle -with their field trips and the myth of the irreplaceable experienced old farts- is over.
Don’t feed the trolls!
Fuels and Lubes is about to need some lube for the a-s job their about to get
Company of this site without an R&D will be a joke.