- Marathon Oil (MRO -4.1%) will cut 200 jobs this month as part of a plan to restructure its upstream business into two distinct units for its key U.S. shale plays and its conventional drilling fields in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, FuelFix reports.
- MRO's Bakken shale, Eagle Ford shale and Oklahoma assets will get the lion’s share of the company’s sharply reduced $2.2B capital budget next year in an attempt to concentrate on profitable and prolific shale fields; MRO is adding muscle to its shale presence at a time when U.S. shale oil production is wavering amid the oil downturn.
- MRO's new conventional business will include assets in the Gulf of Mexico, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Kurdistan, Libya and the U.K., as well as its fields in Wyoming and its oil sands mines.