Shell revamps for Voser era
OIL giant Shell announced a massive shake up yesterday, as incoming chief executive Peter Voser starts to make his mark on the company.
The exploration and production, gas and power, and oil sands unit will be moved into two divisions, one covering North and South America, one covering the rest of the world.
Voser, who takes over from Jeroen van der Veer on 1 July, said the company’s operations had become too complex, and needed to be streamlined.
Workers in restructured divisions who have overlapping functions face being reassigned or losing their jobs. Shell said that “thousands of staff” would be impacted by the changes, but didn’t specify how many job cuts would be made.
The affected divisions employ 22,000. Shell has 102,000 staff in total, an estimated 8,500 of which are employed in the UK.
The news comes a day after Shell’s head of gas and power, the first lady of oil, Linda Cook, unexpectedly stood down “under mutual consent,” having lost out on the top job.
The shake-up comes amid a shareholder revolt over executive pay. Almost 60 per cent of Shell’s investors voted against the company’s remuneration policy last week. The oil giant paid bonuses despite the company missing performance targets.
Shell’s reshuffle comes over a year after rival BP merged its gas and power unit with its main exploration and refining units as part of a similar restructuring programme.