The Royal Dutch/Shell group said on Thursday it will cut ‘hundreds’ of jobs at Shell Nederland in response to falling oil prices. Shell Nederland has a payroll of 8,000, while the group employs 92,000 worldwide, the Financieele Dagblad said on Thursday.

Shell said trade unions and the works council have already been told about the plans. The jobs will disappear largely in the projects and technology department, which was formerly based in Rijswijk.

A spokesman for trade union FNV told the FD that the union is ‘holding talks with Shell’ about the redundancies. The union would not give any further reaction because it had agreed with Shell to say nothing at the moment.

Shell has scrapped more than 10,000 jobs worldwide in the last two years. The acquisition of the British BG Group last year led to the loss of 2,800 jobs and the company had earlier announced 7,500 redundancies.

Earnings

Seperately, Shell reported higher-than-expected second-quarter earnings on Thursday morning.

The oil and gas group reported net earnings of $3.6bn in the period, substantially higher than the $3.36bn projected by Bloomberg’s poll of analysts. Shell said slightly higher oil prices combined with cost-cutting measures contributed to the gain.

Operational cash-flow, a key indicator for investors, soared to $11.29bn in the second quarter from $2.29bn in the year earlier period and well above the $9.5bn booked in the first quarter of 2017.The company is proposing to maintain its $0.47 per share dividend.