UK oil giant BP cuts jobs



LONDON: -- UK oil company BP is set to pay the price for plummeting prices. It has announced it is to shed 4,000 jobs globally, 600 of which will be lost from its North Sea operations.

The job losses come as the company’s profits continue to suffer as a result of a 70 percent collapse in prices.

Benchmark Brent crude dropped to 30.60 dollars per barrel. Analysts believe the price could fall more.

“I think we can look to 20 dollars at the moment and of course there are predications of 20 dollars. And I think that is the area when you look at Saudi Arabia and the Middle Eastern producers, that is the area that it tends to get a little bit more difficult for them to make money off the back of the stockpiles that they have in place, not just producing it out of the ground,” explained James Hughes Chief Market Analyst at GKFX.

The volatile trading in oil has prompted calls for an emergency meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. But UAE Energy Minister Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazroui said the current strategy was working and time was needed to allow it to happen – perhaps one to one and half years.


-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-01-13

If they cut jobs , cut their concessions , increase their tax

If they cut jobs , cut their concessions , increase their tax

When the selling-price of your product falls by 50%-plus, your profits plummet, so your tax-bill falls.

You can't tax profits which weren't made, can you ?

Cutting jobs is something which pretty-much every oil-&-gas company is currently being forced to do, so BP aren't alone in this. Would you propose, in fairness, to cut concessions & increase taxes on the whole industry, when it's struggling as it is ?

Would it also be wise, to reduce their resources for paying-out for the Deepwater-Horizon blowout, when they're currently paying-out massively ... they might not be able to afford to continue to do so, if you (somehow) stripped them of concessions or taxed them beyond what's legal or reasonable

I'd also point out that BP is (or was in 2010) 39% American-owned, and half the board were Americans, it's slightly-misleading to view them (as the headline & Obama appear to) as purely a "UK oil giant". The name used to be 'British Petroleum', but it was changed (over a decade ago) to 'BP', for a good reason.

.http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/just-how-british-is-bp/?_r=0

...there are predications of 20 dollars (some say $18)!

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq can pump a barrel of oil for less than $11 per barrel. Everyone else will lose their profit margin on oil exports. That's going to defund a lot of national economies driven by commodities (like Russia).