By Energy Reporter: Angela Macdonald-Smith: 12 Nov 2015
Shell Australia chairman Andrew Smith has insisted there are no issues of competition raised in eastern Australia with the oil giant’s planned $US70 billion ($98 billion) takeover of BG Group and that letting the deal proceed is the best way of ensuring the company’s undeveloped gas resources in Queensland reach buyers.
“What this market needs is more gas to be developed into the market,” Mr Smith said.
“By approving the combination that will allow for the earliest introduction of Arrow’s resource base into the east coast market,” he said, without pre-empting the November 19 decision due on the deal from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which voiced reservations about it in September.
Australia’s approval for the deal is the key outstanding clearance required worldwide, along with China’s.
The takeover would align the Arrow gas venture in Queensland owned equally by Shell and PetroChina more closely with BG Group’s Queensland Curtis LNG venture, which exports gas from a huge new terminal in Gladstone.
It has raised worries among industrial gas buyers that are already facing higher prices for gas on the east coast that they will face even higher prices and could be left short of energy as Arrow gas would also be sent overseas.
But Mr Smith said LNG was still needed to develop Arrow gas because the small size of the domestic east coast market meant it didn’t have the scale necessary to underpin the investment required.
“It is only through supplying LNG trains that you can get the scale of development to open up some of these areas and address the cost challenges,” he said.
Mr Smith pointed to “compelling industrial logic” in enabling both Arrow and QGC to access existing gas pipelines and processing plants, and said that was particularly important in a cost-challenged environment amid low oil prices.
Gas buyers have suggested the ACCC may consider requiring Shell to sell its stake in Arrow or to divest from certain gas tenements in Queensland. But Mr Smith gave no indication that Shell had offered any such concessions.
At the same time he said Shell understood that to get community acceptance for the large LNG export industry in Gladstone domestic customers needed reliable and competitive supplies. The wholesale price for that gas would need to meet the marginal costs of supply, he added.
Shell has been working to find an economic way of developing Arrow gas since acquiring Arrow Energy with PetroChina for $3.5 billion in 2010 and ditched original plans to build a standalone LNG project last year.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
