Slump in Oil Prices Pushes Shell to Slash Jobs
Due to low oil prices and its recent BG integration, the energy giant Royal Dutch Shell today announced it will slash at least another 2,200 jobs. This losses will bring to at least 12,500 staff and director contractor jobs being cut from the energy company that began early last year and end of 2015.
Job reduction is underway at its operations in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, in Ireland and its other international offices.
For this year, it is expected that the company will cut at least 5,000 jobs globally.
Shell Aims to Be Competitive Amid Market Challenges
The reduction of jobs by Shell comes with an aim for the company to be competitive amid challenges in the oil business sector.
In a statement, the Anglo-Dutch group says “Shell staff have today been informed about the progress being made on integrating BG into the company, and on further measures that are necessary to ensure Shell is competitive in a ‘lower for longer’ oil price environment.”
Paul Goodfellow, Shell’s vice president for UK and Ireland explained that the company is currently facing tough times and it is making necessary measures to maintain Shell’s competitiveness in the market.
“We have to take further difficult decisions to ensure Shell remains competitive through the current, prolonged downturn.” – Mr. Goodfellow
Shell Experiencing Downturns
Many experts say the slump in prices has caused international energy groups to cut spending, axe jobs and even sell assets during the past year.
For one, Shell admitted that it is experiencing the market downturn. In fact, the energy giant said this year’s first-quarter profits had dropped 58% to 1.6 billion US dollars (£1.1 billion) at the beginning of this month.
In addition, the company’s downstream business also experienced the impact of the plummeting oil price. For the first quarter, profits fell from 2.65 billion US dollars to 2 billion US dollars compared with the same period in 2015.
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