Tag: Royal Dutch Shell

Twofer Tuesday Business

First up is the RollingStone’s Matt Taibbi take down of the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who likely has no clue how the average American citizen lives their daily lives. Friedman, likely the wealthiest journalist in the country, is an unabashed proponent of globalization that sees the world divided into two factions, those that like the trend towards the globalization of the world’s economy and those that don’t.

The problem for Friedman being the entire topic is far more complicated than simply painting the opponents of globalization as election year losers (think Bernie Sanders supporters and soon Trump’s). To understand where I’m going with this you must first read Taibbi’s piece because the price of globalization is inequality (income, political and other) along the decimation of the United States middle class. These built in inequalities drove the Brexit vote and no doubt plays a role in the thinking of both Trump and Sanders supporters, which I’m going to illustrate with a picture a reader sent me a while back:

Reader Submitted Photo of the Royal Dutch Shell Special Projects Office in New Orleans, Louisiana. Desks that were once occupied with college educated engineers have been empty for well over a year
Reader Submitted Photo of the Royal Dutch Shell Special Projects Office in New Orleans, Louisiana. Desks that were once occupied with college educated engineers have been empty for well over a year

Those that follow Slabbed’s twitter timeline have witnessed our coverage of the downsizing of the New Orleans RDS office, which I’m getting from a very well placed source. Shell has not exactly made a secret of what they are doing downsizing its New Orleans office but you can’t view what is happening now through the same lens used to examine previous oil patch bust layoffs. Here is an edited comment from Slabbed’s source on the current happenings in NOLA at RDS: Continue reading “Twofer Tuesday Business”

Bad News Friday Time Stamp

Lest someone in the media is actually holding this until the Tuesday scheduled release:

Here is the down low as these latest cuts appear to be above and beyond those publicized last August.

Here is the down low folks:

  1. Shell is closing their Major Projects office in New Orleans. Rolling over those operations to Houston, Texas.
  2. 30% Shell staff cut starting in 2 weeks to be finalized by June 1st. Following that, major Shell staff shifts to Houston office.
  3. There will still be some operations remaining in NOLA including Pipeline, and Brownfield work. Go forward all megaprojects including deepwater will be done out of Houston.
  4. Shell contract + staff was close to 3,000 total in One Shell Square 2 years ago. After this round of cuts and transfers, much less than a thousand jobs will remain.

Hat tip to anonymous impacted.