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Shell to Cut Jobs Under New Structure

Joseph Woelfel

Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A Quote) said Wednesday it plans to make a series of management changes that will reduce corporate overhead and costs and improve the company's performance on delivering new projects.

"Thousands of staff will be impacted," said spokesman Shaun Wiggins, referring to both job cuts and employees being asked to change location, reports the Associated Press.

He said it was impossible to say how many of Shell's 102,000 jobs would be lost but said the 2,000 employees at Shell's headquarters in The Hague would be strongly affected, the AP reports. The Wall Street Journal reports 24,000 staff will be affected.

The company's upstream activities will be pared down to two divisions from three -- Upstream Americas will cover North and South America, and Upstream International will cover the rest of the world.

Shell also will create a new business -- projects and technology -- that will combine all of Shell's major project delivery, technical services and technology capability covering both upstream and downstream, Shell said.

In a statement Wednesday, Peter Voser, who takes over as CEO on July 1, said the new structure "will increase accountability in the company, and improve Shell's performance on delivering new projects and developing new technologies."

Voser also said the new structure would result in "faster decision-making and delivery."

The changes at Shell come a day after the company announced that the head of its liquid natural gas division, Linda Cook, resigned abruptly. The company gave no reason at the time, but under the restructuring unveiled Wednesday, the arm she headed will be eliminated.