WORKERS at a Teesside plant have escaped the worst of a swathe of national job losses announced by oil company BP yesterday.

BP, which runs the Central Area Transmission System (Cats) at Seal Sands, said it planned to axe 800 positions among its contractors as part of a restructuring of its North Sea operations.

However, the Cats terminal will be shedding just 13 of that total. The development comes on top of an announcement in March that BP was to lose 500 of its own staff around the UK, with most of them expected to be voluntary redundancies.

The remainder of the jobs will be lost at sites including Sullom Voe in Shetland, Bacton in Norfolk and its headquarters in Aberdeen.

Neil McMaster, BP spokesman, said: "Thirteen posts are to go at the Teesside plant.

"I must stress that, as the contractors work for other companies, they may find employment with them in other areas.

"What we have done is to say there are 800 contract positions that we no longer require."

The Seal Sands site employs 45 BP staff and 40 contract workers.

The March announcement provoked great controversy as it came hard on the heels of the news that the company's chief executive Lord Browne had received a 58 per cent pay increase, taking his salary to £3.1m

The loss of BP's own staff was said to be a cost-cutting programme designed to secure the long-term future of the oil company's North Sea operations.

That brought 200 job losses among BP staff at its headquarters and 300 at onshore and offshore installations around the UK, including on Teesside.

Mr McMaster said: "The consultation process has taken two or three weeks longer than expected.

"Some people have had the opportunity to move, others to accept voluntary redundancy."

Seal Sand's terminal processes natural gas delivered down a 254-mile pipeline from the North Sea.

It occupies a 72-acre site and has been receiving and processing gas since 1993.

The system can handle more than 48 million cubic metres of natural gas per day, enough to supply more than eight million homes.