Oilfield company to cut 9,000 jobs

The recent slump in oil prices is causing oilfield services giant Schlumberger to cut 9,000 jobs.

The job cuts amount to about 8 percent of the company’s employees and were announced Thursday “to better align with anticipated activity levels for 2015,” the company said, according to USA Today.

{mosads}Schlumberger is the world’s largest supplier of oilfield services.

“In this uncertain environment, we continue to focus on what we can control,” Schlumberger head Paal Kibsgaard told USA Today.

“We have already taken a number of actions to restructure and resize our organization that have led us to record a number of charges in the fourth quarter. We are convinced that performance must now be driven by an accelerated change in the way we work through our transformation program.”

Oil prices have dropped by about half in the last 18 months. Oil in the West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude benchmarks have both fallen below $50.

Earlier in the week, oil drilling company Apache Corp. began the process of laying off about 5 percent of its employees.