The BUs are being asked to slash operating expenses while the oil price is high and company is generally performing well. While CNE and Central orgs are spending like mad on perks: free breakfast/lunch, coffee barista and mock cocktails in the office, travel budgets that encourage trips with no business need, conferences at luxury resorts… it seems that if it isn’t measured by a Competitive Performance metric the spending is fine, but if it is, it’s scrutinized.
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It may be true the cheese is moving, but CNE is too incompetent to follow it!
@chvw……you clearly haven’t done your homework….O&G going “kaput”??? Tires on your car? Paint in your house? Clothes on your back? Everything in your kitchen? Furniture? Pharmaceuticals? Surgical equipment? Roads? TVs? iPhone? I’ll stop typing now, but you really don’t understand that O&G is in everything you touch daily! Yes, we need to electrify and use renewable power to the maximum, but you can’t electrify the goods we use everyday that are made possible by O&G!!!
CNE is our future, guys. Oil and gas will be kaput sooner than you think. If we don’t pivot to something cleaner in the next decade we will disappear like Kodak. Wake up. You all sound like Kodak employees complaining about the digital camera experiments when your great ideas for film weren’t getting funded. Hello? Your cheese is moving.
CNE….wow, what a freakin mess. It is nothing more than green washing at its finest. You have CP in CO2, BH promoting “new ‘energies’ stuff” (wtf is her org about?), and AK in H2 all fluttering about everywhere (and seems like they really like being in Europe and Asia nonstop). All that fluttering about is costing $$$$$ and producing NOTHING. CNE will come about with a few projects over next decade but all low returns in the mid to possibly high single digits. At the same time, traditional double digit return businesses are shutting down high DPI drilling rig portfolios in East Texas and in Canada so we can send funds to CNE for their flights, hotels and speaking engagements. MW is loosing his senior leaders patience with this AND he is losing credibility with the workforce that is being squeezed.
It’s absolutely sickening how flush Corp and CNE are with high PSG do nothings . I have to deal with both a lot and it’s demoralizing as the BUs/Assets under cost and headcount pressures. But the Versailles residents flit around producing absolutely nothing.
@6ydg, 'checking in on customers' can be readily done on the phone or video. Otherwise, just an excuse for a free lunch.
Not to mention AW flying round to BU’s in a private jet with wife in tow! Go figure.
Yes plus CTC needs to check on internal customers frequently and in person. My boss says if I am not traveling I am not really working. She is on the road a lot also. Don’t be envious. Too much travel is a burden, even in five star hotels.
CTC has to travel so they can copy and learn from experts at other companies. No new groundbreaking technology out of CTC (or its predecessors) for at least 15 years now.
CTC has to stay current on technology. Expert5s are supposed to attend and even lead technical conferences worldwide. A lot of travel is involved, no way around it.
CNE is a communist greenwashing moneypit. I refuse to participate.
Don't know what people are talking about around CTC. Here we are cutting contractors and the budget is incredibly tight. It's painful over here so it's definitely not luxurious.
While you are complaining, I’m struggling to find ways to spend my R&D funding. If I don’t spend them out, they will be gone by year end. Tbh, I’ll be punished to have money left on my project by my Chapter manager. I guess we all have tough lives. I think I will have to travel like crazy in the last two months, and perhaps ask my colleagues to travel with me.
I agree, everything being scrutinized to the core here in my BU meanwhile folks I know in CTC continue to travel on boondoggle trips for international conferences and other non revenue generating type trips…. Seems inappropriate for the ones generating the cash flow to be restricted while others spend like there is no tomorrow and struggle at the end of the year to point towards what they did that actually made us more money (not potentially could, or maybe will in the future, but actually did). It’s like a teenager running lose with Dads credit card and rather than take it away, dad picks up 2 extra shifts to continue to let it happen.
Our BU is traveling like normal as far as I can tell. As you all know, all BUs are independent and the VP/MD is free to manage travel as they like. They can be told to hit an opex/boe number that sort of forces travel cuts is all. Normal stuff. If they exceed the target they're bonus grows, so why not do some cutting?
Corpo here - San ramon has the free food because we owed Sodexo money with nobody eating on campus the days they bothered to show up. Travel budgets are all slashed, budgets recycled multiple times, ongoing pressure of doing even more with even less. It ain’t fun.