January 29th, 2008:

By Justine Lauin
Published: January 30 2008

CNOOC, the Chinese offshore oil and gas producer said it expected it would be immune to a global economic slowdown because of tight oil supply in China.

State-owned CNOOC lifted production forecasts and spending this year to meet the country’s hunger for oil. Output is set to rise as some projects are expected to come on stream in 2008.

Yang Hua, chief financial officer, said: “I read from newspapers that about 60 per cent of oil used in China in 2007 was produced locally. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent was imported. That’s why I am not worried about sales of our products.” read more

By Ben Bland
Last Updated: 8:21pm GMT 29/01/2008

Oil behemoth Royal Dutch Shell saw its ‘B’ shares slip 10p to £17.66 amid disappointment that the company will not be providing an update on its reserves alongside its fourth quarter results tomorrow.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/01/30/cxmktrep130.xml

By Benoit Faucon
Last update: 8:44 a.m. EST Jan. 29, 2008

(Adds content of SEC 2006 letters to Shell)

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) won’t provide oil and gas reserves replacement guidance – as it normally does – along with its annual results Thursday, despite its reserves having been an issue in recent years.

Correspondence released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, suggests the U.S. market regulator has continued to pay particularly close attention to Shell’s reserves accounting. In contrast to its closest European oil major rivals, Shell has on more than one occasion been asked by the SEC for additional details. read more

This Day (Lagos)
29 January 2008
Stanley Nkwazema And Patrick Ugeh
Abuja

It emerged yesterday that Anglo Dutch oil and gas giant, Shell, may have secured “critical” concessions from President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua over key Federal Government policies which the firm considers to be unfavourable to its operations in Nigeria.

This development is believed to have informed the decision of Shell to put on hold the planned re-organisation of its Nigerian operations which had threatened the jobs of about 1000 workers – in addition to a drastic reduction in its operations in the Niger Delta.
 
THISDAY was informed last night that Yar’Adua met with Shell’s CEO, Jeroen van der Veer, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, last Friday in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum to discuss the burning issues. read more

Reuters
Tuesday January 29 2008
(Adds closing shares, analysts)

By Tom Bergin

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – Shares in Royal Dutch Shell Plc fell on Tuesday on concerns that the oil major had little luck adding new reserves last year after a report that it wouldn’t publish such figures with its annual results this week.

Shell’s London-listed “A” shares closed down 0.6 percent at 1808 pence, compared with a 1.35 percent rise in the DJ Stoxx European oil and gas sector index. read more

Published: January 29, 2008 8:40 AM

(Adds content of SEC 2006 letters to Shell)

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) won’t provide oil and gas reserves replacement guidance – as it normally does – along with its annual results Thursday, despite its reserves having been an issue in recent years.

Correspondence released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, suggests the U.S. market regulator has continued to pay particularly close attention to Shell’s reserves accounting. In contrast to its closest European oil major rivals, Shell has on more than one occasion been asked by the SEC for additional details. read more

January 29, 2008
Nick Hasell: Tempus

It may be Shell that kicks off the full-year reporting season of the oil majors this week, but it is likely to be BG Group’s numbers – due the following Thursday – that are more eagerly awaited.

Whereas shares in BP and Shell have remained virtually flat over the past 12 months – respectively falling and rising 3 per cent – those of the exploration arm of the old British Gas have surged 54 per cent, leaving them more vulnerable to disappointment.

That BG has so far outpaced its bigger integrated peers owes much to November’s discovery of the Tupi field off the coast of Brazil. On the initial estimates of Petrobras of recoverable reserves of between five billion and eight billion barrels of oil and gas, Tupi – which is operated by the Brazilan group but is 25 per cent owned by BG – is the world’s biggest new find since Kazakhstan’s Kashagan strike at the start of this decade. read more

January 29, 2008  
 
As Iran’s deadline for Shell and Total — with partners — to commit to their LNG projects draws near the companies are again demonstrating activity, but only to a reversible degree; meanwhile, domestic political tension surrounding Iran’s gas is mounting.

Shell, along with partnering Spanish company Repsol-YPF, has launched a prequalification round for suppliers of subsea pipelines to its Persian LNG venture and its connected South Pars gas field upstream development phases 13 and 14, Upstream reported. read more

01.29.08, 6:37 AM ET

AMSTERDAM (Thomson Financial) – Shares were higher in midday deals, with Corporate Express leading the gainers as hopes of a new cut in US interest rates pushed the AEX higher, trading sources said.

At 11.54 am, the AEX was up 7.72 points or 1.76 pct at 447.04.

Meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell (nyse: RDSA – news – people ) bucked the trend and dropped 0.41 pct to 23.47.

KBC downgraded shares in the oil services group to ‘accumulate’ from ‘hold’ and said it would review its 24.47 eur target price after the oil company publishes its fourth quarter and full year results on Thursday. read more

January 29, 2008: 06:40 AM EST

LONDON, Jan. 29, 2008 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE:RDS A) will not provide an update on oil and gas reserves estimates alongside its annual results on Thursday, a company spokesman said.

He said the latest reserves figures will be included in the group’s 20F annual report.

‘We’ve said in the Q3 (results announcement in October last year) that the Q4 statement will be purely financial results and we think the right place to give an update on reserves is on the 20F annual report,’ he said, noting the move is consistent with what other major oil companies are doing. read more

Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:14am GMT

Shares in oil major Royal Dutch Shell are flat as concerns mount that the company had a tougher time in replacing reserves in 2007 than thought.

Shell’a London-listed “A” shares trade down 0.1 percent at 1818 pence, compared to a 1.2 percent rise in the DJ Stoxx European oil and gas sector index .

Shell told analysts earlier this month that it would not publish its reserves replacement rate with its full year results, as it usually does, but would wait until later this year to do so. read more

Jan 29th 2004

From The Economist print edition

What, if anything, can Sir Philip Watts do to survive at Royal Dutch/Shell?

A HOSTILE mob of investors will greet Sir Philip Watts, chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell, on February 5th when he announces the Anglo-Dutch oil group’s annual results. It will not be the profit number that interests shareholders most, but rather a planned 75-minute presentation showing how much crude oil the company has access to around the world.

On January 9th, Shell shocked the financial markets and oil industry by downgrading nearly four billion barrels of its “proven” reserves to “probable”. At a stroke, this wiped one-fifth off a measure most observers use to value oil companies. The firm’s shares dived. read more

By Chris Blackhurst
29 January 2004 

SIR PHILIP Watts went down a storm last Friday. There, I’ve written it – so you’d better believe it. And if that sentence reads like the no-nonsense, minimal-smalltalk, tell-you-straight – so much so you can feel like you’re dealing with a battering ram – Watts, then … tough. 

But he did get a good reception, did the chairman of Shell. He put on quite a show, apparently, speaking to and taking questions from 900 of his most senior employees worldwide. After telling them they were all ‘ambassadors for Shell”, he went on to explain the group’s recent shock decision to cut proven oil and gas reserves by 20% or 3.9bn barrels – a move that wiped £3bn off the company’s value. ‘Ask any question you like,” he said. So they did. They asked whether he was going to resign. No, he said, he had no intention to do so.  read more

Shell ‘to delay reserves data release’

By Upstream staff

Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell will reportedly delayed the release of oil reserves figures that normally accompany its annual profits figures, due out on Thursday.

The UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported that some analysts had been told that reserves figures were not even “up for discussion”, leading to speculation that the company reserves figures were poor.

However, Colin Smith, an analyst with Kleinwort Benson, told the newspaper the delay was “necessarily coy”, saying Shell’s reserves figures had been weakened and made more difficult to calculate after the company last year handed over a controlling stake in its giant Sakhalin 2 project off eastern Russia to Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom. read more

By Damian Reece, Head of Business
Last Updated: 6:47am GMT 29/01/2008

Reserve replacement ratio. Three words to make the eyelids droop – unless you are part of the oil industry. The three Rs are an oil chief executive’s virility symbol, a measure of how much bigger and healthier his company is compared to rivals. With crude having nudged record levels, oil companies can’t pump fast enough. But what matters for their futures is how much oil they’ve got left in the ground.

This ratio is closely watched by investors looking for long-term value in oil companies and is why Royal Dutch Shell’s decision to delay data on its RRR has raised eyebrows. There is no accounting requirement that says Shell must release RRR data along with its profit figures. Some companies do, some don’t. But Shell has always done so in the recent past, and the City liked the transparency of having all the figures in the open on one day. Even companies that prefer to wait until after they’ve published their results (the time-lag is usually due to the need to reconcile UK and US accounting practices) will often give the market a decent steer. But it would appear that Shell will say nothing. And when there’s an information void, there is rumour. read more

By Russell Hotten
Last Updated: 1:10am GMT 29/01/2008

Royal Dutch Shell is to delay publication of key data about its oil reserves that it would normally have released alongside profits figures being published on Thursday.

The decision has disappointed some analysts, who have been told that the subject will not even be “up for discussion” and which has sparked concern the reserves numbers could be poor.

The amount of reserves booked by Shell is always a sensitive issue for the company as it was the revelation in 2004 that Europe’s largest oil firm had overstated the amount of oil in its wells that led to the resignation of chairman Sir Philip Watts and investigations by regulators in London and New York. read more