Royal Dutch Shell has announced it will cut between 7,000 and 9,000 jobs by the end of 2022, as a result of the challenges brought about by the coronavirus pandemic.
The oil giant said the cuts would include around 1,500 people who took voluntary redundancy this year and added that this forms part of plans to reduce the company’s complexity and set a restructuring process in action.
Reduced organisational complexity, along with other measures, is forecast to deliver cost savings of between $2 billion (£1.5bn) to $2.5 billion (£1.9bn) by 2022. according to the company’s third-quarter report.
The firm said third-quarter earnings are expected to be at the lower end of the $800 million (£624m) to $875 million (£682m) range.
Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, said: “It is very painful to know that you will end up saying goodbye to quite a few good people. I know I, and many others in Shell, will be saying goodbye to people we know well and really like and who have great loyalty to the company.
“But we are doing this because we have to because it is the right thing to do for the future of the company. We have to be a simpler, more streamlined, more competitive organisation that is more nimble and able to respond to customers.”