Oil giant Shell has announced plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs worldwide due to a collapse in demand for oil following the coronavirus pandemic.
Between 7,000 and 9,000 jobs will go by the end of 2022 as part of a major cost-cutting drive after the business was hit by a drop in demand for oil and a subsequent dive in prices.
Investors have been told that this includes around 1,500 employees taking voluntary redundancy this year.
In a statement, Shell said: “Reduced organisational complexity, along with other measures, are expected to deliver sustainable annual cost savings of between two billion dollars to 2.5 billion dollars by 2022.
“This will partially contribute to the announced underlying operating cost reduction of three billion dollars to four billion dollars by the first quarter 2021.”
He said the company is looking at a raft of other areas where it can cut costs, such as travel, its use of contractors and virtual working.
Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, said the pandemic has shown the company it can adapt to working in new ways but stressed that “a large part of the cost saving for Shell will come from having fewer people”.
In June, rival BP said it was cutting around 10,000 jobs from its workforce to cope with the impact of the virus.
