Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) said that it may resort to additional job cuts in case further restructuring is required to control operating costs.
CEO Peter Voser said further restructuring may be needed to control operating costs and declining production as energy demand recovery is expected in the second half of the year.
“It’s normal in any business that you have to go further and you have to operate your operating expenditure in a very tough way,” Voser told Bloomberg.
“We still see some effects from the stimulus package into 2010, some of the consumption-driven demand is not coming back, so I’m rather more pessimistic for the first half of the year than I am maybe for the whole year or the second half.”
Shell, which had a $32bn expenditure programme last year, reduced its operating costs by nearly $1bn in the first nine months of 2009.
The company has also put 15% of its refining capacity under review and cut back on production expansion from its Canadian tar sands projects.
Shell plans to increase output, which fell below 3 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, with new projects in Malaysia, Qatar, Iraq and Venezuela.
