Sadly, it was decided that I was no longer a necessary part of ConocoPhillips last September after many years of loyal service. I receive a decent exit package which has given me some time to start a side career in online writing. But more importantly I've been able to get past the anger and now I see the larger picture of what the company is trying to do.
Nobody's denying that ConocoPhillips has done an impressive job in turning the company around, but what the market seems to be missing is that the turnaround isn't over. Things are likely to get even better for Conoco, as exemplified by an exchange between analyst Doug Leggate of Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Al Hirshberg, executive vice president of production, drilling, and projects.
Hirshberg: Well, no, we're not done and we're never done. ... We're still planning to hit our original OpEx target $5.7 billion, and so we've done that by shaving about $0.25 a barrel off our unit operating cost. But, we -- as an example of one of the kinds of things we've been doing as we continue to focus on our cost -- even as oil prices have come back up, we recently had a reorganization in our Houston Center and our Lower 48 organization and the increased productivity and organizational effectiveness that we've had there has allowed us to to reduce our Houston staffing by about 10% this year... . We expect that that effort alone will allow us to decrease our Lower 48 G&A cost by about $0.30 a barrel next year. So, we're continuing to work away on it, even [though] higher prices are back, so we can quit focusing on that.