Russia’s Gazprom to Slash 40% of Head Office Staff

Gazprom, Russia’s state oil conglomerate, is set to lay off 1,600 out of 4,100 staff in its St. Petersburg central office, according to a leaked letter.

Russian outlet 47news.ru reported the planned move, citing a leaked letter sent at the end of December by Elena Ilyukhina, the company’s deputy chairman of the board.

The letter, addressing Gazprom Chairman Alexey Miller, outlined planned staff reduction at the conglomerate’s St. Petersburg central office, which it said would be done by optimizing the number of management personnel and making changes to the wage system.

In the letter, Ilyukhina cited the need to “solve the challenges facing the group” as the reason for the layoff, which she claimed would be done by using freed-up funds to increase motivation and develop personnel.

Ilyukhina claimed the total payroll expenditure for the conglomerate exceeds 50 billion rubles ($485 million) annually, whereas Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear energy firm, employs 1,246 management staff out of 350,000 staff in total.

In its brochure, Gazprom said it employed 498,100 staff as of December 2023.

The letter’s authenticity was subsequently confirmed by Sergey Kupriyanov, Gazprom’s head of the information policy department.

“The document is relevant. We do not plan to comment,” Kupriyanov told Forbes Russia.

The company has been under US sanctions since early 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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In 2024, it was reported that Gazprom suffered a net loss of 629 billion rubles ($6.9 billion) in 2023 compared to a net profit of 1.23 trillion rubles ($11 billion) in 2022 after losing access to the European market as a result of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

On Friday, the US and UK announced sanctions against Russia’s energy sector, including Gazprom Neft, a Gazprom subsidiary.

On Dec. 28, Gazprom said it would halt gas supplies to Moldova from Jan. 1 over a debt dispute during a state of emergency over energy security in Moldova.