With the exacerbation of the Corona crisis, continuing for a long time and spreading all over the world, BP expected a decrease in crude oil prices for decades to come. Therefore, the company drastically lowered its price forecast, and expected that the price of Brent crude would not exceed $ 55 a barrel for the next three decades and until 2050.
The giant company says it will reduce the value of its assets by between 13 and 17.5 billion dollars, due to the sharp decline in oil demand after the shutdown in most parts of the world as a precaution against the epidemic.
On the other hand, the company announced its plans to eliminate ten thousand jobs, representing about 15% of the oil group’s 70,000 employees, by the end of the year 2020.
Bernard Looney, the new CEO of the company, says that job cuts have become necessary to enable the company to cope with the global collapse in oil demand due to the Corona virus pandemic. He added that the company must rediscover itself and emerge from the crisis, to be “a smaller company, faster in movement, with less cost and less carbon emissions.”
It is worth noting that Bernard Looney had joined the company in 1991 as a drilling engineer. In April 2016 he became head of the group’s global oil and gas exploration, development and production activities, and the company chose him to replace Bob as CEO when he retired. Bob, served the company for nearly ten years since 2010 during which he led the company to cross it from the brink of bankruptcy after it caused the largest oil spill in US history (Deep-water Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico).