…saddled with a mountain of debt…
By SARAH KENT: Jan. 3, 2017 7:00 a.m. ET
LONDON— Royal Dutch Shell PLC has a goal for 2017: Slimming down. The British-Dutch oil-and-gas giant bulked up in February with the roughly $50 billion acquisition of BG Group PLC, giving Shell a dominant position in liquefied natural gas and some of the world’s most prized offshore oil fields in Brazil. It also saddled the company with a mountain of debt—$78 billion at the end of the third quarter—that is higher than peers such as Exxon Mobil Corp.