Oil giant Shell has said it plans to cut up to 9,000 jobs worldwide following a collapse in demand for oil following the coronavirus pandemic.
The company said the redundancies would be made by the end of 2022 and included 1,500 people who had taken voluntary redundancy.
Shell currently has 83,000 employees in more than 70 countries – but the company has not yet said where job cuts will be made.
The company said the job cuts are part of a major cost-cutting programme after the business was bit by the slump in demand for oil and a subsequent dive in prices.
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said the organisation needed to be “simpler, more streamlined, more competitive”.
“It is very painful to know that you will end up saying goodbye to quite a few good people. I know I, and many others in Shell, will be saying goodbye to people we know well and really like and who have great loyalty to the company.
“But we are doing this because we have to, because it is the right thing to do for the future of the company.”
Van Beurden said six Shell employees and six Shell contractors had died after contracting Covid-19.
The news comes almost four months after rival BP announced it was cutting as many as 10,000 jobs amid a global slump in the demand for oil.