By Tim Daiss – Jul 08, 2018, 10:00 AM CDT

Several oil majors, including Royal Dutch Shell and BP, are boosting their share of natural gas output. A Bloomberg report said these two oil companies, by increasing gas production, are trimming the lead between them and ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. ExxonMobil has a current market cap of $348 bn, while Shell has market cap of $317 bn, and BP at $156 bn.

BP expects by 2020 to produce about 60 percent gas and 40 percent oil, a reversal from 2014 when it was the opposite – a pivot that many other oil companies will likely follow. ExxonMobil for its part currently produces about 55 percent oil and 45 percent gas and remains the largest natural gas producer in the US. Shell’s acquisition of UK-based BG Group for $50 bn in 2016 boosted the share of natural gas to 50 percent of its global fossil fuels output and made it the world’s largest natural gas trader. read more

By Kevin Crowley and Kelly Gilblom
25 June 2018, 00:00 BST

Big Oil’s fortunes are becoming tied more closely to natural gas than ever before.

Majors including Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc have boosted their proportion of gas output in recent years, helping them trim Exxon Mobil Corp.’s lead as the world’s most valuable oil company. Meanwhile Chevron Corp. added two giant Australian liquefied natural gas projects and Exxon is punching back with two major projects of its own, in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique. read more

Shell dumps interest in two Norwegian fields

Shell adds $556 million toward its goal of divesting $30 billion in a streamlining effort.

By Daniel J. Graeber: June 20, 2018

June 20 (UPI) — Supermajor Royal Dutch Shell said Wednesday it sold off its entire stake in two fields in production off the Norwegian coast for $556 million.

Shell’s subsidiary in Norway sold its entire 44.56 percent interest in the Draugen field and its 12 percent in the Gjøa to Norwegian energy company OKEA.

OKEA CEO Erik Haugane in a statement on the deal said the agreement with Shell was a “high-quality acquisition.”

His company estimates it will become the 19th largest producer offshore Norway with the deal. The Shell acquisition gives it a boost in net production of about 22,000 barrels of oil equivalent. read more

Tanzanian MP Wants Shell-BG U.S.$500 Million Transaction Investigated

By Alawi Masare; 25 May 2018

Dodoma — Momba MP Mr David Silinde (Chadema) has asked the Parliament to form a special committee to investigate the transaction between Shell and BG over Tanzania’s gas blocks alleging that Shell did not pay capital gain tax.

Debating the budget of the Ministry of Energy on Friday, Mr Silinde said the company should pay the tax estimated at $500 million.

“There is a possibility that the transaction involved corruption. Hence, denies the country the revenue which could address different challenges in the energy sector,” said Mr Silinde. read more

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden

By Chris Mooney and Steven Mufson March 26, 2018

Royal Dutch Shell on Monday outlined a scenario in which, by 2070, we would be using far less of the company’s own product — oil — as cars become electric, a massive carbon storage industry develops, and transportation begins a shift toward a reliance on hydrogen as an energy carrier.

The company’s Sky scenario was designed to imagine a world that complies with the goals of the Paris climate agreement, managing to hold the planet’s warming to “well below” a rise of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. Shell has said that it supports the Paris agreement. read more

Summary

• Shell declared an income of $13.4 billion compared to $4.8 billion in 2016.
• Merger with BG was a game-changer for Shell.
• Shell has now positioned itself as an energy company that is ready to embrace new challenges.

Headquartered in the Hague, Netherlands, Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) has established itself as one of the most prominent oil and gas companies in the world. Although the last few years have been tough for the energy giant, Royal Dutch Shell has now started making the right moves, which will reap benefits in near future.

In its recently published Annual report for 2017, Shell declared an income of $13.4 billion compared to $4.8 billion in 2016. Although it must be noted that high oil and natural gas prices contributed to this yearly gain, a year-on-year increase of 279% is commendable. read more

Ron Bousso. Ernest Scheyder: 8 March 2018

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) is focused on increasing its U.S. shale operation’s oil production while slowing investment in lower-margin natural gas, an executive said on Thursday.

The Anglo-Dutch company aims to boost its overall shale production by 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) to 500,000 boe/d between 2017 and 2020, mostly in the United States with some production in Argentina.

Although the shale business has yet to generate a profit, it is expected to do so next year, Greg Guidry, who heads Shell’s shale operations, told Reuters on the sidelines of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston.

Shell, like Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N), aims to make shale production a driver of growth in the next decade. But today most of its output is natural gas, where profit margins are lower.

As a result, around 85 percent of Shell’s shale budget for at least the next two years will go toward new oil resources, particularly in the Permian oilfield of West Texas and Canada’s Duvernay Basin, Guidry said. read more

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Shell, the FTSE 100 oil behemoth, is plotting a $10bn (£7.3bn) joint takeover bid for the American shale division of BHP, the world’s biggest miner.

Sky News has learnt that Shell and Blackstone, the private equity firm, have agreed to work together on an offer for the assets, which were put up for sale last summer by BHP amid pressure from an activist investor.

A joint offer from Shell and Blackstone would be only one of several credible proposals that BHP is expecting to receive for the US shale operations, according to banking sources. read more

Nidal-Mughrabi: MARCH 5, 2018 / 3:36 PM

GAZA (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has given up its stake in an undeveloped natural gas field off the Gaza Strip, sending the Palestinians looking for a new foreign group to replace it, Palestinian officials said on Monday.

Cabinet ministers from the Palestinian Authority said in a statement they had been informed that the energy giant was pulling out of the project and were now in the process of“trying to attract a global company” to take its place. read more

Shell’s oil and gas reserve life – the number of years it can sustain production at its current levels – has steadily declined in recent years despite the acquisition of BG Group

LONDON/HOUSTON (Reuters) – The gasps in the audience were clearly audible at the auction of Mexico’s oil blocks a month ago as Royal Dutch Shell’s hefty bids were announced one by one.

The Anglo-Dutch major knew something no one else did.

Six months earlier, its drilling rig had struck a giant oil reservoir, the Whale well, in the U.S. side of the Gulf of Mexico – just across the border from many of the Mexican blocks, which share a similar Paleogene-age geology.

Calculating that this significantly increased the chances of the Mexican blocks also containing treasure, Shell delayed the announcement of the discovery until the day of the auction, after bids had been submitted. read more

Shell’s deepwater production in Brazil, Nigeria, the Gulf of Mexico is much bigger and more profitable, but the firm sees the nimble, fast-returns U.S. onshore shale as an engine for growth.

“We can see strong (shale) production growth, strong cash surpluses that gives us a balance in our portfolio where you can ramp investment up and down, you can moderate that, very unlike deepwater which is quite chunky,” Andy Brown told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the IP Week conference. read more

David Sheppard, Energy Markets Editor

“The LNG glut — conspicuously absent isn’t it?” Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben Van Beurden said last week, in a rare display of public self-satisfaction from a modern energy major head. He had good reason to allow himself a moment’s celebration. Shell’s decision to buy BG Group in 2015 was, at least in part, a major bet on the future of LNG. It looks now like it should pay out far sooner than many in the industry anticipated.

FULL FT ARTICLE read more

Shell’s boss said yesterday that the North Sea is showing signs of “rejuvenation” and can provide the oil major with more room to grow.

Written by Mark Lammey – 02/02/2018 7:37 am

Doubts about Shell’s commitment to the UK were raised last year when it agreed to sell a package of assets to Chrysaor.

But last month the Anglo-Dutch energy giant announced its decision to invest in redeveloping the Penguins area, 150miles north-east of Shetland.

The project will involve the construction of Shell’s first new manned installation in the northern North Sea in almost 30 years.

Chief executive Ben van Beurden said yesterday that the Penguins decision was “important” for Shell. read more

by Angela Macdonald-Smith: Feb 2 2018 at 12:03 PM: Updated Feb 2 2018 at 3:19 PM

Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden has declared that the energy giant’s confidence in the LNG market has been justified with no sign of the oversupply that others had warned of.

“The LNG glut is conspicuously absent isn’t it, much to the surprise of those that thought this was inevitable,” Mr van Beurden told reporters at Shell’s fourth-quarter results briefing in London. read more

By James Sillars, Business Reporter:1 FEB 2018

Royal Dutch Shell has reported a surge in annual profits to £8.5bn – a leap of 242% on the previous year.

The Anglo-Dutch oil major credited the performance on a recovery in oil and gas prices during a “year of transformation” within the business.

The company said: “Full-year earnings benefited mainly from higher realised oil, gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices, improved refining performance and higher production from new fields, which offset the impact of field declines and divestments.” read more

Jillian Ambrose: 1 FEBRUARY 2018 • 8:13AM

Royal Dutch Shell has doubled its profits following the oil major’s worst financial year in over a decade as the oil market recovery takes hold.

The Anglo-Dutch oil giant said the “transformation” following its 2016 mega-merger with BG Group and $30bn portfolio overhaul has reopened flows of cash back into the business as oil prices soared to over $65 a barrel last year, from under $30 a barrel at its lowest point in early 2016.

Shell’s earnings on a ‘current cost of supply’ (CCS) basis, which is a standard oil industry measure, more than doubled from the previous year to reach $15.8bn (£11bn) for 2017. read more

The Anglo-Dutch company on Thursday reported a more than doubling of profit in 2017 to $16 billion, the highest since the start of the 2014 downturn as the effect of years of costs cuts and the integration of BG Group filtered through.

“We enter 2018 with continued discipline and confidence, committed to the delivery of strong returns and cash,” van Beurden said in a statement.

Shell’s shares were 1.1 percent lower at 0842 GMT, compared with a slightly positive open for the FTSE 100 index. read more

The oil-price rally worked both ways for Royal Dutch Shell Plc as improved exploration and production lifted profit to a three-year high while refining and trading fell short of expectations as margins shrank.

Crude’s surge raised adjusted profit at Europe’s largest energy company to $4.3 billion last quarter, the highest since 2014. While the bottom line was better than expected — and Shell is making as much money with oil at $60 a barrel as when it was $100 — cash flow was the weakest since 2016. read more

Written by Mark Lammey – 29/01/2018 7:53 am

Shell is performing “extremely well” at a time when Brent crude is at its highest price for three years, the oil giant’s upcoming fourth quarter results will show.

The Anglo-Dutch major is in its strongest position for many years in terms of its cash generation thanks to its upstream and LNG businesses, analysts said.

RBC Capital Markets anticipates Shell’s fourth-quarter adjusted net income will more than double year-on-year. The company recorded adjusted earnings of £1.3billion in Q4 2016.

Analysts said Shell, whose shares are up about 10% over the last 12 months, had been boosted by the sale of assets and disciplined spending.

The company implemented a £21billion-plus divestment plan following its £47billion mega-merger with BG Group, which was completed in 2016.

As part of that programme, Shell sold about £3billion worth of North Sea assets to Chrysaor in 2017.

RBC analysts said the company would have cashed in £1.1billion in the fourth quarter from the proceeds of UK North Sea sales alone. read more

Jillian Ambrose: 28 JANUARY 2018 • 5:04PM

Royal Dutch Shell is set to unveil its highest earnings since the oil market collapse this week, just one year after the oil major’s lowest profits in more than a decade.

The Anglo-Dutch oil group’s efforts to overhaul its portfolio during the depths of the oil market rout are expected to be turbo-charged by the recovery in oil prices to over $65 a barrel last year, from under $30 a barrel at their lowest point in early 2016.

Analysts predict the group’s earnings on a “current cost of supply” basis will be more than $15.7bn (£11bn) for 2017 from just $3.5bn (£2.5bn) the year before. The final quarter of last year is expected to generate higher earnings than the whole of 2016 at $4.2bn (£3bn), according to analyst consensus forecasts. read more

Even in the dynamic world of business, some things always hold true: the Big Mac outsells the Whopper, Google gets more searches than Bing, and Exxon Mobil Corp. is the world’s biggest public oil company. Or perhaps not.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc is the closest it’s ever been to attaining the long-coveted prize of overtaking its American rival. While the Anglo-Dutch oil major still has some work left to snatch Exxon’s crown, Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden has made getting to the top his restless mission.

“At the moment we are number two and we are closing in on number one,” he said this month. “We almost have the tiger by the tail.”

That van Beurden thinks his goal is even in sight shows the risk he took in doing the industry’s biggest deal in decades is starting to pay off. Meanwhile, the strategy charted by Exxon’s former CEO Rex Tillerson has left the American major slightly adrift, according to investors.

“Ben doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk now,” Richard Hulf, co-manager in Artemis Global Energy Fund, part of a London investment management group that owns both Exxon and Shell shares. “Shell’s got a bit better and Exxon is at a weak point in its cycle.”

The narrowing gap is likely to show through when both companies post earnings next week. Analysts estimate Shell will report $16 billion of profit in 2017 helped by the acquisition of BG Group Plc. Exxon is forecast to report $15.7 billion of earnings, dropping behind its European rival for the first time in at least two decades. Shell is also likely to have churned out more cash from operations than Exxon last year.

It’s the $53 billion BG deal that’s really made a difference. When oil’s crash started in the middle of 2014, just months into Van Beurden’s tenure as Shell’s boss, he saw an opportunity. BG’s oil projects in Brazil and gas in Australia were just starting up, easing uncertainty on future growth. Rumored for years to be a suitor, van Beurden finally made the move for the British company.

The deal immediately put Shell in an exclusive club with Exxon, placing it on a plane above its European rivals Total SA and BP Plc. Some use the phrase ultra-major to differentiate the industry’s big two from the pack – at least until Saudi Aramco’s giant IPO, slated for the end of this year.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. As oil prices continued to slide in 2014, many analysts thought the price tag was excessive, forcing Shell to borrow too much. Van Beurden was staking his reputation on the deal and he pressed on, seeking to create what he often calls a “world-class investment case.” The company was forced to cut costs, sell assets and rein in spending to keep borrowing under control.

Still, in the two years since the BG deal closed, Shell’s B shares in London, the most widely traded, have returned more than five times Exxon’s, reversing the performance of the previous two years and providing superior returns for shareholders.

“Strategically BG was the right deal,” said Iain Pyle, the investment director for U.K. equities at the investment unit of Standard Life Aberdeen Plc, among the largest Shell shareholders. “The only question about it at the time was the price they paid and the stress they put on the balance sheet to do the deal.”

In the start of 2015, before Shell announced the BG deal, Exxon’s market value was about $180 billion more than Shell’s and it had just reported an annual profit $10 billion higher.

Since then, Exxon has struggled to keep the business growing. Exxon’s production in the third quarter was 1.8 percent lower than a year ago while Shell’s rose 1.7 percent. The American company’s oil and gas reserves have also dropped (though this may change this year as it books reserves from a  giant discovery  off the coast of Guyana in South America.) The gap in the two companies’ market value has more than halved to about $73 billion.

Shell’s record takeover fueled speculation Exxon would snap up a big rival to maintain its world-leader status, but it’s recent deal history hasn’t been a resounding success.

The $35-billion purchase of American shale gas company XTO in 2010 came shortly before gas prices plummeted. It also struck a deal with Rosneft PJSC to explore and develop giant offshore fields in Russia in 2011, right before they became locked behind a wall of U.S. sanctions. These left its “upstream portfolio disadvantaged,” Credit Suisse said. read more

Last March, Royal Dutch Shell said it was selling most of its stake in Canada’s oil sands, a vast project that has extracted millions of barrels of sticky, gooey hydrocarbons from the ground in a process that resembles mining more than drilling. The oil and gas giant announced that it was unloading its oil-sands assets, for $7.25 billion, so that it could double down on businesses “where we have global scale and a competitive advantage.”

Left unsaid was a deeper reason for the divestiture. Months of deliberations behind closed doors at Shell headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, had led the top brass at the world’s largest non-state-owned oil company by sales to conclude that the energy industry was changing fundamentally—in a way that could turn the profitable oil-sands operation into a liability. read more

The Value Portfolio: Jan 23, 2018

Summary

• Royal Dutch Shell took advantage of the market downturn to acquire BG Group. That let the company grow by 50%, something that has supported production significantly.
• Royal Dutch Shell anticipates cash flow of $25-30 billion by 2020, and that could grow to almost $50 billion with recovering oil prices. That will result in significant reward to shareholders.
• I think LNG will be an especially rewarding opportunity for Royal Dutch Shell going forward. That could help the company’s cash flow to grow even further.

Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE: RDS.B) has been on a tear recently, growing to a $300 billion oil giant, making it the second-largest publicly traded oil company in the world. Yet the company isn’t done. A combination of the company’s integration of its more than $50 billion acquisition of BG Group, at an opportune time, combined with the company’s strong portfolio and its growth potential makes the company a royally good investment.

BG Group Combination

The company’s acquisition of BG Group, at a time when the oil markets were dropping, was viewed with various opinions. Many wanted the company to not issue shares when prices were low and preserve cash. However, the company paying for roughly 40% of the acquisition with cash minimized the dilution to shareholders. And it enabled the company to gain access to strong assets at a great time. read more

Written by Mark Lammey – 03/01/2018 12:00 pm

Energy giant Shell has been ordered to improve its safety procedures at the St Fergus plant near Peterhead.

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said the company had failed to made “adequate arrangements” to ensure that “emergency shutdown and emergency depressurisation valve actuators” were maintained in an “efficient state and effective working order”.

HSE initially gave Shell until December 21 to comply with the improvement notice, but the deadline has now been extended to February 28.

A spokeswoman for Shell said: “We can confirm that we have been issued with an improvement notice on 23^rd November 2017 in relation to the maintenance of emergency shutdown valves at our St Fergus plant in North East Scotland. read more

Steve Hill, executive vice president of Shell Energy, discusses Shell’s growth in the liquefied natural gas industry aboard Dynagas’ Lena River LNG carrier as its docked at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG

By Jordan Blum: December 7, 2017

SABINE PASS, La. – In 2011, Cheniere Energy was a little-known company with big ambitions when it signed an $8 billion contract that would transform the United States into an exporter of liquefied natural gas after decades of relying on foreign suppliers. read more

Great Speculations: Trefis Team: DEC 7, 2017 @ 04:22 PM

With the growing inclination towards the use of cleaner and environment-friendly sources of energy, natural gas has emerged as a preferred choice of fuel worldwide. However, due to the challenges related to the transportation and storage of gas, the demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) has grown faster than the demand for natural gas over the last decade. As a result, natural gas producers, particularly in the U.S., have been expanding their LNG operations to capitalize on the booming demand for the commodity. Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) is one such integrated energy company that has been increasing its presence in the gas markets. In this note, we discuss how Shell’s integrated gas business will drive value for the company over in the long term. read more

Jillian Ambrose: 28 NOVEMBER 2017 • 12:44PM

Royal Dutch Shell has signalled the end of the three-year oil market downturn by restarting its all-cash shareholder payouts as its cash flow begins to boom.

The oil major began paying out dividends in the form of shares in 2015, in the wake of the oil price crash and its $50bn takeover of BG Group.

But chief executive Ben van Beurden said the Anglo-Dutch group was now confident that it could call an end its scrip dividend as its cost-cutting and divestment programme pays off. read more

It’s payback time for investors in Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Shareholders in the Anglo-Dutch oil company have had to endure receiving their dividends partly in stock throughout the industry price slump. This mild austerity is now ending. Shell is signalling that when it comes to spending its cash, shareholders will get first dibs.

The move to a full cash dividend, announced on Tuesday, is only just affordable. Investors should feel lucky the dividend wasn’t cut. In the 12 months to Sept. 30, organic free cash flow of $17 billion wouldn’t have covered the full dividend bill plus interest on Shell’s $68 billion net debt. read more