BP to speed up job cuts around the world as oil prices plummet

BP has said the falling price of oil means it’s speeding up job cuts in the UK and abroad. The company, which has around 15,000 employees in the UK and about 84,000 people worldwide, has been undergoing a major rationalisation since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But the fall in crude prices — down almost 40 per cent since the summer — had added “more focus to the simplification”, according to a spokesman. However, the oil giant was not “setting a number” in terms of how many jobs would be lost or where. Since the 2010 disaster, BP has been shedding around $40 billion of the business.

[The job losses would be in the] head office and back office, not the front line operations.

BP spokesman Robert Wine

"We have sold about a third of the business but we are still set up for being that bigger company that we used to be," BP spokesman Robert Wine said. Parts of the business in line to be slimmed down include the legal, procurement and HR departments. Mr. Wine said the job cuts would make the business more efficient, but they had not been caused by the fall in oil prices. He also said, "It’s certainly added more focus to the simplification that is going ahead but it certainly hasn’t been triggered by that … It’s added to the importance of getting the simplification right."

Business BP