Oil giant BP axing thousands of jobs

BP is planning to cut more than 5% of its 90,000-strong workforce as part of a cost-cutting drive.

BP is planning to cut more than 5% of its 90,000-strong workforce as part of a cost-cutting drive. The British oil giant told employees in a memo Thursday that it would slash around 4,700 jobs this year. The company also said it was cutting 3,000 contractor roles and that 2,600 of those contractors had already departed. Last year, “we began a multi-year program to simplify and focus BP,” a company spokesperson told CNN. “We are strengthening our competitiveness and building in resilience as we lower our costs, drive performance improvement and play to our distinctive capabilities.” The spokesperson noted that employee numbers had “grown significantly” over the past couple of years as BP had acquired businesses with large workforces. The spokesperson declined to say how the job cuts would be distributed across the company’s businesses and the regions where it’s present, which include the United States. Last April, BP CEO Murray Auchincloss set a target to reduce costs by $2 billion by the end of 2026 from the 2023 level. In his memo to employees Thursday, shared with CNN, he said the company had either stopped or paused 30 projects since June and ramped up efforts to digitize its operations, among other actions.