As oil gains stall, the nation’s largest oil company looks to job cuts

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I’m thrilled about two things: We’re on the cusp of a holiday weekend, and today we get to talk about gay things. I’m not talking about joy. Obviously.

Let’s get to it.

Where oil and gay rights don't mix

LGBTQ icon RuPaul may have a fracking empire, but any reference to his popular TV show Drag Race, a drag queen competition, is likely to land with a big thud on an oil rig.

To be clear, the oil industry's biggest Western companies have made huge strides in their support for LGBTQ workers in the last decade.

• Four of the largest companies including Chevron and Shell, for example, all aced Human Rights Campaign's national corporate equality index this year, indicating that they support their gay workers.

But the story of inclusion becomes a lot more complicated in the non-Western world, where these companies have enormous operations and thousands of employees.

• Many hotspots of the oil industry, like Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, outlaw same-sex relations and/or criminalize forms of gender expression.
• Some places even maintain the death penalty for same-sex behavior.

Analysis: We compared the global operations of seven of the world's largest oil companies to regions with anti-LGBTQ laws.

• You can see the results of that analysis here in beautiful graphics made by BI's Shayanne Gal.
• We found that multinational oil companies operate in more than 40 countries that outlaw same-sex relations.

So what? In these regions, global companies, based in the West, face a tension between upholding their own nondiscrimination policies and abiding by local laws and conforming to the national culture.

• LGBTQ workers get caught in the middle of this tension, and experts say nondiscrimination policies aren't enough to protect them.
• You can read more in our full story.

How you can help: Are you or an acquaintance a member of the LGBTQ community and working in the oil industry? If you're comfortable reaching out, we'd love to hear about your experience.

Exxon has long avoided talk of job cuts. That's starting to change.

Exxon's pitch to prospective workers is that it's a stable giant within an industry prone to swings. Part of that pitch is that it doesn't do layoffs.

• "Our size and the integrated nature of our operations provide stability throughout the economic cycle," notes accompanying an Exxon campus-recruiting presentation seen by Business Insider said.
• "This point should help ease the concerns of students who may be worried about joining an oil-and-gas company due to news reports about layoffs in the industry over the last few years," they continued.

Companies use layoffs to cut costs during financial strife. Right now is a great example, considering the oil market collapsed earlier this year â€" and it's still struggling to gain ground.

• Most major companies have responded by cutting staff (we're tracking layoffs here).
• Oil giants BP and Schlumberger, for example, have announced they're cutting more than 30,000 workers combined.

Exxon's approach: The company initially took an alternative approach to shrink its workforce, using performance reviews to cut staff.

• But now the oil giant is changing its tune. Exxon is weighing cuts in its offices around the world, Business Insider first reported.
• Here's everything we know about job cuts at Exxon.
• If you have a tip about Exxon, please reach out to me here or on Signal at +1-646-768-1657.

A brief note for investors: Goldman Sachs came out with a list of its 10 top energy stock picks this week for investors looking beyond Exxon. You can see those all here.

A breakthrough battery startup backed by Bill Gates is going public

In the billion-dollar race between startups and investors to develop a better battery for electric cars, one company just got a lot closer to the finish line, BI's Ben Winck reports.

Backed by Volkswagen and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund spearheaded by Bill Gates, the secretive startup QuantumScape revealed three big updates this week, Medium's Marker reported.

• Breakthrough: The firm, which makes solid-state batteries, said it's solved the problem of working with pure lithium, a finicky material prone to fires. This is a big deal, Marker explains.
• Timeline: VW electric cars could run on QuantumScape's pure metallic lithium batteries as soon as 2025.
• IPO: The startup said it was going public using a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with a value of $3.3 billion.

WTF is a SPAC? Also known as blank check firms, SPACs are companies that raise money from investors with the sole purpose of acquiring other businesses, BI's Melia Russell reports.

• "As the two companies merge, the publicly traded SPAC effectively takes the private business public, without the pomp and cork-popping of a traditional IPO," she writes.
• In the case of QuantumScape, it will be merging with Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp., and appear on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker QE.
• You can read Melia's full explainer on SPACs, and why they've become so popular amid the pandemic, here.

4 big stories we didn't cover

1. Driving out of town this weekend? You'll see the lowest Labor Day gas prices since 2004, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
2. Schlumberger, the largest oilfield services company in the world, is selling its North American fracking business to rival Liberty Oilfield Services as oil prices fail to gain ground.
3. Two-thirds of all new energy added globally last year came from solar and wind energy, while fossil fuels accounted for just a quarter, according to new data from the research firm BloombergNEF.
4. Consumer goods giant Unilever, which sells products ranging from Lipton tea to Dove soap, said it would remove fossil fuels from its cleaning products. Many cleaning products are made using oil-derived ingredients, which is kind of ironic, because soap is often used to clean up oil.

That's it! Have a great holiday weekend, and feel free to drop me any feedback here.

- Benji