Nigeria exempted as Shell increases job cut by 20%

Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), has announced increase in the number of job cuts in 2015/2016 by around 20 percent to about 12,500.

The job cut is as a result of low oil prices and the integration of BG Group, it said on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the company will reduce the size of its UK and Ireland oil and gas production, or upstream by 475 unitsthroughout 2016, it said.

“Despite the improvements that we have made to our business, current market conditions remain challenging,” said Paul Goodfellow, Shell’s vice president for UK & Ireland, after breaking the news to employees in Scotland’s Aberdeen.

The oil major has significantly reduced its annual spending target to below $30 billion and is selling $30 billion (20 billion pounds) worth of assets to weather weak oil prices which brought its 2015 earnings to the lowest in over a decade.

Shell said it expects net job losses in 2016 to be lower than 5,000 due to recruitment in IT and at the graduate level.

The company let go 7,500 staff and direct contractors last year and previously said 2,800 jobs would be cut with the integration of BG Group.

However, Nigeria was excluded from the list as against recent news making the rounds that its Nigerian workforce would be included.

In February, the Chief Executive Officer of the group, Ben Van Beurden, said in a webcast on its 2015 fourth quarter and full year results that it would cut its global workforce by about 10,000 in 2016.

This raised speculations in Nigeria, with different labour groups threatening fire and brimstone if workers were laid off.

Questions were filed to its spokesperson in Nigeria, Precious Okolobo on the stand of Nigerian workers in the looming sack, however, he declined responding to enquires.

However with the latest development, the sack will affect only workers in the UK and Ireland.