Royal Dutch Shell is cutting 6,500 jobs in Nigeria and at the rest of its global operations and will reduce capital spending by 20 per cent this year, as the oil company takes dramatic action in response to the plunge in oil prices.
The Anglo-Dutch group announced on Thursday its investment this year would decline $7bn from last year’s levels to about $30bn, a bigger drop than forecast just three months ago, as it axed and postponed new projects.
It expected to make further reductions to operating costs in 2016 after a 10 per cent fall this year the Financial Times reports.
The action comes amid savage cost-cutting and industry-wide moves to push back billions of dollars
of spending on new projects, following the collapse in crude prices over the last year. Some $200bn of spending on major oil and gas projects has now been deferred since the crude price began falling, a decline that accelerated when Opec opted not to cut output in the face of soaring US production.
