The retrenchment plans, which is in addition to 4,000 jobs cut last year when BP trimmed its work force to about 80,000, comes as the price of oil dropped to a 12 year-low near $31 a barrel.
"We recently informed staff that we plan to further reduce numbers in our upstream segment by 2017 as we continue to simplify our biness, improve efficiency and reduce costs," BP spokesman Brett Clanton said in an email. He said the company would not make cuts at the expense of safety, BP's "number one priority."
BP's upstream operations this year will shrink to about 20,000 employees.
After oil prices began dropping from the peak in mid 2014, oil companies have shed more than 250,000 jobs worldwide last year, according to energy recruitment firm Swift Worldwide Resources. In the United States, the oil indtry lost 70,000 jobs, the Federal Reserve estimates.
In the past 12 days of 2016, oil prices have fallen 15 percent after plunging more than one-third in the previo year.
Some of the global analyst and energy think tanks have forecast that the low price scenario would continue in the near future as there is no sign of pick up in demand even as the oversupply situation continues with the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) having decided against any production cuts.
"In an oversupplied market, there is no intrinsic value for crude oil," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients. Assuming continued dollar appreciation, "$20-to-$25 oil price scenarios are possible simply due to currency," they wrote.
Besides the low oil price, BP has cutting staff in the recent years as part of an exercise to raise resources through asset sale, downsizing operations, etc, to meet it liabilities arising from the Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010.
In 2015, BP was ordered to pay more than $20 billion in fines to resolve nearly all claims from its Gulf of Mexico oil spill five years ago. As a result, the company's total pre-tax charge for the spill is now around $53.8 billion.
Last year, BP announced that it would lower its capital expenditure (CAPEX) to between $17-19 billion a year through to 2017. The group's 2015 CAPEX was also cut by several billion.
BP's operations in the North Sea, Alaska, Angola, Azerbaijan and the Gulf of Mexico are among areas being considered for job cuts.
Mark Thomas, regional president for BP North Sea, said in a statement that because of toughening market conditions "we need to take specific steps to ensure our business remains competitive and robust."
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