Dive Brief:
- BP expects to eliminate 6,200 corporate positions, or about 15% of its office-based workforce, by the end of the year as part of its ongoing cost-reduction strategy, Chief Financial Officer Kate Thompson said during the company’s second quarter earnings presentation on Tuesday.
- The announcement represents a sizable increase from the 4,700 layoffs BP said it intended to make earlier this year. Beyond the 6,200 corporate positions, BP also expects to eliminate 4,400 contractor roles by the end of 2025 — an increase from the 3,000 it estimated it would cut back in January.
- About 60% of BP’s thousands of layoffs this year have so far come from within its customers and products segment, which includes BP’s global convenience store business, Thompson said during the presentation.
Dive Insight:
BP launched its company-wide reset back in January amid efforts to lower costs by about $2 billion before 2026. The strategy at that time included laying off about 5% of its global workforce and shifting its focus from renewable energy back to oil production.
The restructuring appears to be yielding some savings as BP has already reached about $1.7 billion in structural cost reductions — $400 million of which have come from corporate and overhead, Thompson outlined in Tuesday’s presentation.
“Progress in our structural cost reduction program reflects the significant changes we have made to performance culture across the organisation to further embed discipline and accountability,” Thompson said.
BP confirmed earlier this year that the reset has impacted its convenience store segments, although it’s unclear to what extent. In the U.S., BP operates over 1,500 convenience stores under several banners, including TravelCenters of America, Ampm and Thorntons.
Besides its convenience store segment, BP’s customers and products division includes its electric vehicle charging, lubricants, aviation midstream, refining and oil trading, and bioenergy businesses. BP did not break down how each of these areas has been hit by the layoffs.
