Halliburton to Lay Off 2,750 More Workers

Halliburton Co., the nation’s top oil services provider, said Monday that it plans to lay off an additional 2,750 employees and that its earnings won’t meet expectations for the latest quarter, citing lower crude oil prices and customer plans to reduce spending in 1999.

The Dallas-based company already had announced 8,100 layoffs, including 5,550 in October, just days after regulators approved its merger with Dresser Industries.

Halliburton expects fourth-quarter earnings of 14 cents to 16 cents per share, well below Wall Street expectations of 36 cents. The company said its lowered earnings expectations included a pretax charge of $35 million for the new jobs cuts and a $60-million pretax provision for project losses. In 1997, Halliburton posted fourth-quarter earnings of 56 cents per diluted share.

The job cuts, representing about 2.7% of Halliburton’s 100,000 employees, come amid the low crude oil pricing pressures that have hit the industry, a company spokesman said. The cuts, only affecting the Energy Services division, will take place early next year.

“This is affecting everybody in the petroleum industry worldwide,” Halliburton spokesman Guy Marcus told Reuters. He said no further job cuts were planned outside the Energy Services division.

Halliburton said customers for whom the company is working on projects in the North Sea, North Africa and Latin America have been hurt by low oil prices, and have employed stricter negotiations in regards to project claims for additional costs incurred.

The same economic pressures have more dramatically affected some of the company’s joint venture partners and major subcontractors in several of these projects, the company said.

“These pressures have become more acute in the 1998 fourth quarter and particularly affect contracts in the Brown & Root Energy Services business unit,” the company said in a statement.

Founded in 1919, Halliburton is the world’s largest provider of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries.

The job cuts were announced after the close of trading. On the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Halliburton fell 6 cents to close at $32.94.