BP plans layoffs, transfers at Chicago-area offices
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil major BP Plc (BP.L) told its 3,300 office workers in the suburbs of Chicago on Thursday that many staff will be relocated to Houston while others may be laid off, a BP spokesman said.
The move comes in the wake of BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward's decision to slash management layers and devote more resources to standardizing procedures across the group to cut costs.
"We are going to reduce the duplication of having two corporate centers in Chicago and Houston and send a lot of corporate functional activities down to Houston," said BP spokesman Scott Dean.
BP's U.S. headquarters is in Houston, along with its upstream operations. Downstream operations ranging from refining, retail and pipelines, to supply and trading are located at offices around Chicago.
BP has not yet determined how many jobs will be affected by the reorganization, Dean said. The company has not set a target for staff reductions.
BP plans to keep its U.S. supply and trading functions in Chicago but will move these workers to a new facility in downtown Chicago to bring its traders closer to Chicago's financial institutions, Dean said.
Staff are expected to begin moving to Houston in the summer of 2008 as a planned expansion of BP's corporate campus there reaches completion.
BP's extensive U.S. operations have been the source of many headaches for the company since 2005. BP has suffered lengthy delays on two flagship Gulf of Mexico oil platforms, as well as embarrassing corrosion problems spills at its Prudhoe Bay field in Alaska.
BP's two largest refineries in Texas City, Texas and Whiting, Indiana have also been plagued by operational problems since a 2005 deadly explosion at Texas City that killed 15 workers.
