Shell to Cut 2,800 Jobs Following Takeover of BG

Royal Dutch Shell is planning to shed more than 2,800 employees following its merger with the BG Group in 2016. The job cuts trim approximately 3% of its combined staff as the energy giant struggles with the prolonged drop in prices of oil.

The cut in the workforce was announced the day Shell and BG announced that Chinese regulators gave their approval for this merger, which was the final big hurdle the two companies had for the merger.

Shell already has announced the approvals for this merger from regulators located in Australia, the U.S., the European Union and Brazil. The cuts in jobs are in addition to eliminating 7,500 jobs Shell had announced earlier in 2015.

Shell was believed to be ready to trim its workers if the $70 billion BG takeover gained approval as planned during the next year.  However, the scale of cuts were not known at the time.

BG, a company based in Britain, is considered smaller than Shell, an Anglo-Dutch company. BG has approximately 5,250 employees to over 90,000 at Shell.

Shell announced that the tie with BG will have synergies that were pretax of more than $3.51 billion.

The reductions of jobs come during a time the entire oil industry has been going through turmoil not that the price of crude have plummeted over 66% since its peak in June 2014 of more than $114 per barrel.

Energy groups have slashed thousands of positions as have suppliers, including projects that are worth billions and billions of dollars being delayed or shelved.

Shell has had to stop a number of projects including the explorations of the Arctic to the north of Alaska as well as an expensive venture of oil sands in Canada.

Weakness that has remained in the price of oil has fueled concerns from shareholders that Shell had paid too much in its takeover of BG and the deal might be depend too much upon recovery in the price of oil for it to be a success.

Brent crude, a benchmark for international oil prices traded at under $38 per barrel Monday morning, which was down over 33% since this deal with BG was announced April 8.

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