BP to announce North Sea job cuts

Baku. 15 January. REPORT.AZ/ BP employs nearly 4,000 people in the North Sea, with a further 11,000 elsewhere in the UK.

The oil giant announced a major restructuring in December in response to the fall in the world oil price, which has halved in recent months.

It is also expected that, in line with other companies, BP will reduce pay for contractors.

The briefing will be held at its North Sea headquarters in Aberdeen.

Last month, BP announced that plans to cut hundreds of jobs within its back-office departments - many of them based in the UK and US - would be accelerated. The restructuring is expected to cost £640m in the coming years.

Report informs citing BBC, BP, which has been downsizing since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, said it had long planned the cuts, but was speeding up the process due to falling oil prices.

At the time, a BP spokesman said: "The fall in oil prices has added to the importance of making the organisation more efficient and the right size for the smaller portfolio we now have."

The price of a barrel of oil has dropped to about $46 from a peak of about $115 last summer.

BP will be the latest in a string of North Sea operators to have announce job losses, with Shell cutting 250 jobs last August, and Chevron losing 225 in July.

Some, including the Wood Group and Chevron, have announced salary freezes for staff and pay cuts for contractors.

The industry said even before oil prices started to fall that it had to address high costs, which included the number of contractors on large, often six-figure salaries.

On Wednesday, the Scottish first minister said the falling price of oil posed a risk to jobs in the North Sea as she announced a task force was being set up to help the sector.