Arco Begins Restructure, Cuts First of 1,500 Jobs : * Energy: L.A.-based company trims 145 positions here, 900 in Dallas. Environmental costs and low gas prices were cited.

Moving more quickly than expected, Atlantic Richfield Co. has begun laying off some of the 1,500 workers who will lose their jobs in a corporate restructuring announced Friday.

Most of the cuts will be made at Arco Oil & Gas Co., the firm’s Dallas-based exploration and production division. But the first layoffs came at Arco Products Co., the refinery and marketing unit based in Los Angeles. There, 145 of 3,200 employees were taken aside Thursday and told that their jobs had been eliminated.

Arco Chairman and CEO Lodwrick M. Cook, who called the reorganization a “mid-course correction,” said in a statement: “I regret that a number of people who have served Arco well will be leaving.” The Los Angeles-headquartered company has 20,000 U.S. employees.

The Dallas work force of 5,350 will be reduced by 900 workers as some operations are consolidated and planned expansions are deferred. Employees learned the general outlines of the restructuring in meetings Friday.

Cuts will occur at all levels of the Dallas unit, said spokesman Earl Sims, but most will involve what he termed “support personnel”-- accountants, financial officers, staff engineers and human-resources specialists.

“Reductions at the field level are very small,” Sims said.

In Los Angeles, workers had been apprehensive since receiving a computer message from Arco Products President George H. Babikian a month ago. “Our industry is in a transition phase brought about by environmental requirements and the economy,” the message said. “All non-essential activities will be eliminated.”

When word of Arco’s plans emerged last week, analysts said the company--like much of the oil industry--was suffering from the recession, the tightening of profit margins in oil refining and weakness in the natural gas market.

Kidder, Peabody & Co. analyst William H. Brown said the latter factor may have been decisive in the firm’s cutbacks. “Arco has been becoming more conservative about natural gas,” he said Friday. “The big drop in spot prices through spring and summer was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Those laid off in Los Angeles this week ranged from low-level employees to a vice president of Arco Products. Some employees were still negotiating their fate Friday afternoon, co-workers said.

“You could cut the atmosphere with a knife,” one middle-level manager said.

Laid-off employees were told informally that they did not need to return to work Friday and would be carried on the payroll until Oct. 1. Severance packages offered up to six months’ pay, depending on an employee’s age and seniority.

Brown said the payroll savings computed, roughly, to 25 cents a share.

Arco stock closed down 88 cents a share Friday at $120.88 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Also Friday, Sun Co., the Pennsylvania-based oil and gas producer, announced its own plan to restructure operations and cut a “substantial” number of jobs.