Royal Dutch Shell PLC plans to cut as many as 9,000 jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerates a company-wide restructuring into low-carbon energy.
The move reflects the challenge facing Big Oil as the pandemic persists, with some in the industry believing the era of demand growth is already over. As the crisis hastens the shift to cleaner energy, oil majors are axing jobs, taking multibillion-dollar writedowns and even slashing once-sacrosanct dividends.
At Shell, job reductions of 7,000 to 9,000 are expected by the end of 2022, including about 1,500 people taking voluntary redundancy this year, the company said yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
It has about 83,000 employees. Sustainable annual cost savings of US$2 billion to US$2.5 billion are predicted by that time.
“We have to be a simpler, more streamlined, more competitive organization,” Shell chief executive officer Ben van Beurden said in a statement.
“In many places, we have too many layers in the company: too many levels between me, as the CEO, and the operators and technicians at our locations,” he said.
Shell also warned of lower sales in the third quarter, saying that oil product volumes were about 4 million to 5 million barrels a day, down from 6.7 million a day a year earlier.
Oil product trading results would fall short of the historical average and would be “significantly lower” than in the second quarter, it said.
That shows that the oil-trading bonanza that saved Shell’s last set of results is unlikely to be repeated.
The company also expects refining margins to be much lower than in the second quarter.
Its full third-quarter financials, scheduled for Oct. 29, are to include impairment charges of US$1 billion to US$1.5 billion.
Shell’s reorganization is also designed to further its expanded green ambitions.
The firm in April said that it aimed to eliminate all net emissions from its own operations and the bulk of greenhouse gases from fuel it sells to its customers by 2050.
Shell also said that it would ultimately only do business with emission-free companies.
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
TikTok abounds with viral videos accusing prestigious brands of secretly manufacturing luxury goods in China so they can be sold at cut prices. However, while these “revelations” are spurious, behind them lurks a well-oiled machine for selling counterfeit goods that is making the most of the confusion surrounding trade tariffs. Chinese content creators who portray themselves as workers or subcontractors in the luxury goods business claim that Beijing has lifted confidentiality clauses on local subcontractors as a way to respond to the huge hike in customs duties imposed on China by US President Donald Trump. They say this Chinese decision, of which Agence
RSS