KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 29): Shell Malaysia has decided to lay off 1,300 jobs over the next two years, a move to improve its efficiency and competitiveness. The group has a total workforce of about 6,500 staff.
In a statement today, the group said the programme aims to improve efficiency and remove complexity to become a more agile and competitive company.
“We are strengthening our organisation by prioritising productivity and efficiency, without compromising on safety and reliability. We will emerge from this process as a more nimble, resilient and competitive player in the Malaysian oil and gas industry,” Shell Malaysia chairman Iain John Lo said in the statement.
Explaining the move, Lo said this is a difficult decision to make.
“We have made adjustments in our upstream portfolio and we will drive greater efficiency in our operations. Regretfully, these have resulted in an unavoidable impact on staff,” he said.
“I wish to reiterate our commitment to treat our people with respect and care in line with the Shell Global People Principles, and help them transition from their current positions,” Lo added
Nevertheless, Lo reiterated that the group remains confident of its future in Malaysia.
Under the low oil price environment, Lo said Shell Malaysia is preparing itself to be more competitive, and continuing business as usual is not sustainable.
“We are taking difficult, but necessary action. We have a strategy going forward, anchored on our scale and competitiveness in the upstream and leveraging our leading brand in the downstream,” he said.
“We remain aligned strategically with the group and we are confident that we will be able to deliver competitive returns for our shareholders, thus earning the mandate to compete for our future in Malaysia,” Lo continued.
The group said Malaysia is one of the very few countries in the Shell Group where all the major lines of Shell’s business, from the upstream to the downstream as well as business services, are present.
In the upstream, Shell Malaysia’s Gumusut-Kakap platform is the company’s first deep-water floating production system in Malaysia.
Shell Malaysia said it has also recently achieved a milestone in the construction of a tension leg platform for its second deep-water venture, the Malikai oil field, 100km offshore Sabah.
The group invested an average of US$100 million per annum for exploration over the last six years and has made 11 discoveries in the past 24 months.
(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)