SHELL jobs in the north-east look to have been spared the axe in the latest round of cuts at the oil and gas giant.
It emerged yesterday that a further 1,000 positions globally are going, on top of the 5,000 shed in 2009 and 1,000 the firm had previously flagged up for this year.
Shell would not say exactly where the latest cuts in its 101,000-strong worldwide workforce would be, but chief executive Peter Voser said the axe would fall mainly on downstream and corporate roles.
Aberdeen, where Shell employs about 1,800 people, is the hub for the firm’s UK upstream – exploration and production – activities and is, therefore, unlikely to see much of an impact.
But about 8,500 Shell UK workers have been left wondering if the latest round of redundancies will be the last.
Jake Molloy, north-east spokesman for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said contractors working offshore were also getting increasingly nervous.
“They are receiving mixed messages of what the future holds for them. There is no clarity at all from Shell right now.”
The company is selling a range of assets in the UK and overseas to help to meet the cost of its £18billion capital spending programme this year.
Earlier this month, it revealed it was looking for a buyer for the Anasuria floating production vessel in the central North Sea plus stakes in associated fields.
Yesterday’s move is part of “firm plans” for about £660million of savings in 2010 and 2,000 job cuts by the end of 2011, including the 1,000 that were announced in February as Shell posted a 69% plunge in annual profits, to £6.1billion.
Also in February, Shell said it had frozen salaries for top bosses to show “appropriate restraint in the current economic environment”.
Mr Voser and finance head Simon Henry, who took on their roles last year, will not see their pay reviewed again until January 2011 under the reforms.
International exploration boss Malcolm Brinded is also affected by the pay freeze, although he has had his salary kept on hold since July 2008, according to Shell.
The group aims to net up to £2billion a year from asset sales as it exits from non-core activities and focuses its downstream business, including refining and forecourt sales, on the most profitable and high-growth areas.
Shell plans to exit from 15% of its worldwide refining capacity and 35% of its current retail markets.
In a strategy update yesterday, the Anglo-Dutch group admitted it had been slow to respond to the global downturn.
But Mr Voser said the firm was entering a “new period of growth” and he pledged to turn around years of under-performance and ramp up production by 11% to 3.5million barrels a day by 2012.
“These are exciting times for Shell,” he said.
“We are poised to deliver a new wave of financial and production growth.
“We are making substantial investments in new projects to drive the financial performance going forward.”