Oil giant Shell has confirmed that it plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs as it updated shareholders on third-quarter trading.
Shell said that the restructuring would lead to annual savings of $2 billion to $2.5 billion by 2022.
Shell, which had 83,000 employees at the end of 2019, said around 1,500 staff had agreed to take voluntary redundancy and that the rest of the 7,000-9,000 job cuts would be made by the end of 2022.
Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said the job cuts were “the right thing to do for the future of the company” as it strives to become a net-zero emissions energy business.
“We have had to act quickly and decisively and make some very tough financial decisions to ensure we remained resilient, including cutting the dividend,” said Mr van Beurden.
“But as hard as they were, they were entirely the appropriate choices to make. And Covid-19 has hit us in another way. We have, very sadly, lost six employees and six contractor colleagues to the virus.”
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