(Updates throughout)
LONDON, May 25 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell willcut a further 2,200 jobs, taking its target for layoffs to12,500 by the end of the year, the Anglo-Dutch oil firm said onWednesday, as it cuts deeper in the face of weak oil prices.
Shell let go 7,500 staff and direct contractors last yearand previously said 2,800 jobs would be cut with the integrationof BG Group.
Whilst the cuts are small in comparison to the overallamount of people employed in the oil and gas industry, Shell's12,500 job reductions are equal to the entire workforce ofsocial media company Facebook.
The combined Shell-BG company employed around 94,600 staffat the end of 2015.
Shell announced that out of the additional 2,200 job losses,475 will come from its upstream UK and Ireland business.
"Despite the improvements that we have made to our business,current market conditions remain challenging," said PaulGoodfellow, Shell's vice president for UK & Ireland, afterbreaking the news to employees in Scotland's Aberdeen.
The oil major has significantly reduced its annual spendingtarget to below $30 billion and is selling $30 billion worth ofassets to weather weak oil prices which brought its 2015earnings to the lowest in over a decade.
Shell said it expects net job losses in 2016 to be lowerthan 5,000 due to recruitment in IT and at the graduate level.
Shell started offering employees in Britain and theNetherlands voluntary redundancy last month. (Reporting by Ron Bousso and Karolin Schaps, editing by LouiseHeavens)