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Shell to Spend $40 Billion in Americas, Boost Output

Bloomberg

By Eduard Gismatullin – Sep 29, 2010 10

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s biggest oil company, plans to invest about $40 billion in the Americas through 2014 to boost production by 40 percent.

Shell’s oil and gas output in the region may reach 1 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in the period, The Hague-based company said in a statement.

Operations in the Americas have the potential to generate over $10 billion in cash flow in 2012, Simon Henry, the chief financial officer at Shell, said in a video interview posted on the Internet. It’s “a very good position to be in, very much fits our global ambition for financial growth and the strategy to allocate more capital” to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development region.

The company has spent more than $60 billion on extraction projects and acquisitions in the Americas since 2004. Since March, Shell has been assessing more than 35 projects worldwide that may add 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources, boosting production until 2020. Global project investments may exceed $100 billion by 2014, Shell said March 16.

“Americas will be a key growth engine for Shell in the years to come,” Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser said in the statement distributed yesterday.

‘Key’ Projects

Shell plans to start 13 “key” projects in 2010 and 2011, Matthias Bichsel, a director for projects and technology at Shell, also said in a video interview. Five of these projects have already started, including the BC-10 in Brazil, Perdido in the Gulf of Mexico, tight gas in North America, the Gbaran-Ubie project in Nigeria and the expansion of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Canada.

Shell has been examining final investment decisions for more than 20 projects in 2010 and 2011, Bichsel said. The company has agreed to start work on the second phase of the BC- 10 deepwater project in Brazil.

Shell is tapping North American tight gas fields, which have 40 trillion cubic feet of potential resources in hard-to- reach rock formations, it said. Production of the fuel may double to 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the period between 2009 and 2015.

The Anglo-Dutch company added more than 500 million barrels of oil equivalent resources in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009 and 2010, it said. It plans to pump more than 250,000 barrels a day in the Gulf, it said, without giving a time frame.

Shell intends to sell at least $2 billion of producing assets in the region in 2010 and 2011 as part of a $7 billion to $8 billion global disposal plan, according to today’s statement.

“The Upstream Americas organization is well positioned for profitable growth in Shell,” Marvin Odum, director of exploration and production at Shell in the Americas, said in another video interview on the Internet. “This is a region with substantial and diverse energy resources.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at [email protected]

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