Shell Fires 10,000 Workers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 2:51PM EST · Published Jan 20, 4:38AM EST

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Shell Fires 10,000 Workers — © Thinkstock

As its fortunes collapse due to falling oil prices, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE: RDS-B) will fire 10,000 people in an effort to bolster margins.

Shell’s drive to improve competitive performance is delivering at the bottom line. Operating costs have reduced by $4 billion, or around 10% in 2015, and the company expects Shell’s costs to fall again in 2016 by a further $3 billion. Synergies from the BG combination will be in addition to that. Together, these actions will include a reduction of some 10,000 staff and direct contractor positions in 2015-16 across both companies, as streamlining and integration of the two companies continue.

It is no wonder Shell posted terrible results:

When Shell announces its results on 4 February 2016, Shell’s fourth quarter 2015 earnings on a current cost of supplies (“CCS”) basis excluding identified items are expected to be in the region of $1.6 – 1.9 billion. This includes Upstream of $0.4 – 0.5 billion, of which Integrated Gas some $1.6 – 1.9 billion, and Downstream of $1.4 – 1.6 billion, of which Oil Products some $1.3 – 1.4 billion and Chemicals some $0.1 – 0.2 billion. Full year 2015 earnings on a CCS basis excluding identified items are expected to be in the region of $10.4 – 10.7 billion.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.