US based oilfield services provider Halliburton is planning cut 6,000 jobs in the first quarter in order to reduce costs.
The firm said that it is also delaying the announcement of its full earnings report from 25 April to 2 May due to a deadline to complete the $34bn merger deal with Baker Hughes by the end of this month.
Recently, the US government has filed a lawsuit to prevent Halliburton from acquiring Baker Hughes claiming that the deal would eliminate competition and increase the prices in the oil services sector.
Halliburton said that the global drilling and completion spending reduced by more than 30% for a second consecutive year.
It also expectsfurther 50% reduction in spending on drilling and completion services by in North America in 2016, following last year’s 40% decline.
Halliburton chairman and CEO Dave Lesar said: "Our customers have taken defensive actions to solidify their finances including significant reductions to headcount and capital spend.
"While these were necessary actions, it clearly will result in production declines in the back half of 2016. But even when operators feel better about the markets, they will still face issues of balance sheet repair and we believe they will be cautious in adding rigs back.
"As activity levels recover, we believe there will be a structural shift to lowering cost per barrel of oil equivalent, through more collaborative business models with service providers, more aggressive application of our industry-leading technologies, and less duplicative costs."
Halliburton said that the company’s total revenue dropped by 17% to $4.2bn in the first quarter from the previous three months.
Image: Halliburton’s headquarters in north Houston, US. Photo: courtesy of 0x0077BE/Wikipedia.