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.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last