News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Group
The Times
Shell finance chief Jessica Uhl quits over relocation to London
Emily Gosden, Energy Editor: The Times
Shell’s chief financial officer is to stand down after deciding that her family could not follow the oil giant in its move to Britain.
Jessica Uhl, 54, has held the role since March 2017 and was a “key architect” of Shell’s decision to simplify its share structure and move its headquarters and the roles of chief executive and chief financial officer from the Hague to London.
BBC News
Shell plans to move headquarters to the UK
15 Nov 2021
Royal Dutch Shell has announced a plan to move its headquarters to the UK as part of proposals to simplify the company’s structure.
The oil giant will ask shareholders to vote on shifting its tax residence from the Netherlands to the UK.
It also wants to do away with its dual share structure in favour of just one class of shares to boost “the speed and flexibility” of shareholder payouts.
Shell’s chief executive, Ben van Beurden, will relocate to the UK.
OILPRICE.COM
Shell: Splitting Up Oil, Renewables Won’t Work
By Tom Kool – Oct 28, 2021, 8:30 AM CDT
Splitting up Shell’s oil and renewables divisions would not work as the supermajor’s strength is the integration and funding new energy solutions with the earnings from the legacy business, the company’s top executives said on Thursday, a day after an activist investor called for breaking up the major into separate companies.
Activist investor Third Point built a position in Shell in the second and third quarters, and said on Wednesday that it would be beneficial for Shell to split off its LNG and renewables divisions, leaving Shell’s upstream, refining, and chemicals operations to be separated from the greener divisions.
Goldman Sachs board nominates Royal Dutch Shell CFO for director role
By Elizabeth Dilts Marshall:
NEW YORK, March 15 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s board of directors on Monday nominated the chief financial officer of Royal Dutch Shell plc to become its newest member.
If her appointment is approved by shareholders, Jessica Uhl will be the fifth woman director on Goldman’s board and its only member to come from the fossil fuel industry.
The bank has backed away from fossil fuel development in recent years.
World’s top oil trader retiring from Shell
, Bloomberg News: 9 Dec 2020
Royal Dutch Shell Plc is shaking up its mighty in-house trading unit, with the retirement of Mark Quartermain as head of crude — a job widely seen as the most powerful in the global oil-trading industry.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major used the reshuffle to promote at least three women to top positions in trading, a rarity for an industry still dominated by men.
Quartermain will retire in the summer of 2021, less than four years after taking the job, having led the team through one of the most turbulent and profitable periods in history. He will be replaced by Stacie Pitts, who becomes the most influential woman in the oil-trading business.
Shadia Nasralla, Ron Bousso: APRIL 30, 2020
LONDON, April 30 (Reuters) – The ongoing transition to low-carbon energy sources may accelerate as economies recover from the impact of the coronavirus crisis, the head of oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday.
Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said while Shell was not ringfencing its low-carbon Integrated Gas and New Energies division from spending cuts to weather the crisis, those businesses would be shielded from the worst of the reductions.
“Where possible, we try to spare (New Energies) a little bit and that is basically because we still believe that there is an energy transition underway which may even pick up speed in the recovery phase of this crisis and we want to be well positioned for it,” he said after Shell announced first-quarter results.
The firm announced it intends to repurchase almost £20 billion shares by 2025, with the first tranche expected to see it re-aquire £2.1bn over the next three months.
Shell pre-tax profits rose to £7.2bn for Q1 if this year, compared to £6.3bn over the same period in 2018.
But, by Shell’s own preferred method of reporting it also experienced a 7% drop in statutory earnings and a 2% fall in underlying earnings.
Chief executive Ben van Beurden said the firm had delivered “robust results” despite challenging market conditions.
London — Shell is keen to grow its US shale oil portfolio but does not feel pressured to chase new acquisitions, as Occidental and Chevron battle for control of Anadarko’s Permian-rich upstream assets, Shell Chief Financial Officer Jessica Uhl said Thursday.
Shell doesn’t “need” to do a US shale deal as it already has a strong US portfolio of shale and tight oil, which has further room for volume growth, Uhl said.
“We have significant growth capacity in our existing position and, in that sense, we are not desperate. We don’t need to find new shale exposure … but we like the business,” Uhl told analysts on an earnings call.
Speaking after Shell became the latest giant to report a fall in profits amid renewed oil price volatility, Ms Uhl made clear the oil giant’s focus in the North Sea has shifted to growth after a period of retrenchment.
Kelly Gilblom, Bloomberg:
Oil is trading well below its price of a decade ago, but you’d have no idea looking at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s giant pile of cash.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major generated the most cash from operations in 10 years last quarter — almost $15 billion. The last time Shell pumped out that much money was the year crude soared to $140 a barrel, compared with about $75 today.
As a result, the company is showing greater confidence. It increased the pace of a $25 billion buyback program, rewarding shareholders who stuck with it through crude’s collapse. The cash surge is a feather in the cap of Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden, who splashed more than $50 billion on buying BG Group Plc in 2016 during the depths of the downturn.
Royal Dutch Shell is under pressure to repay its investors’ patience this week by beginning a bumper $25bn (£19bn) share buy-back plan.
The oil giant issued shares to existing investors instead of paying out dividends when oil prices were low as it sought to hang on to cash.
As the crude market has recovered, Royal Dutch Shell has so far prioritised debt reduction over repurchasing the dividend scrips.
But expectations are high that its quarterly report on Thursday could signal the start of buy-backs.
26 April 2018
ROYAL Dutch Shell finance chief Jessica Uhl has hailed a big increase in profitability in the North Sea and underlined the oil and gas giant’s commitment to the area.
As Shell posted a 42% increase in first quarter profits to $5.3bn (£3.8bn) from $3.8bn, helped by the rise in oil and gas prices, Ms Uhl indicated the North Sea has played a big part in the growth story.
“We’re seeing a really fantastic performance from our assets in the North Sea,” she told reporters.
Management thinks the things it has done in recent years will set it up to deliver huge returns for shareholders.One thing that is becoming a larger fixture of every investor conference call for Shell and other big oil companies is touting one’s alternative energy strategy. Shell is around the middle of the pack when it comes to shifting away from oil and gas, but CEO Ben van Beurden was quick to point out some of the investments the company made recently as well as the framework for its alternative investment strategy.
So we expect our capital investment in New Energies to be $1 billion to $2 billion on average per year until the end of the decade. But as it is dependent on both organic and inorganic investment opportunities, this might be a little bit more or a little bit less depending on the year. But that’s, of course, without changing the overall group capital investment budget for that year.
Royal Dutch Shell PLC (NYSE:RDS.A) Q4 2017 Earnings Conference Call February 1, 2018 9:00 AM ETExecutives
Ben van Beurden – CEO and Director
Jessica Uhl – CFO and Executive Director
Analysts
Michele Vigna – Goldman Sachs Group
Jason Gammel – Jefferies LLC
Christyan Malek – JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Theepan Jothilingam – Exane BNP Paribas
Iain Reid – Macquarie Research
Lydia Rainforth – Barclays PLC
Oswald Clint – Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Jason Kenney – Grupo Santander
Thomas Adolff – Crédit Suisse AG
Jonathon Rigby – UBS Investment Bank
by Angela Macdonald-Smith: Nov 29, 2017
Royal Dutch Shell has sewn doubt in the market about an early 2018 start-up of the oil major’s innovative Prelude floating LNG project off the coast of north-west Australia, with chief executive Ben van Beurden signalling that the project will only start contributing noticeably to cash flow in 2019.
While the ramp-up of the $US54 billion (71 billion) Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia was named by Mr van Beurden as among projects named to help grow cash flows next year, Prelude was included in the later batch.
Reuters Staff: NOVEMBER 13, 2017
LONDON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is selling part of its stake in Australia’s largest independent oil and gas company, Woodside Petroleum Ltd, to equity investors for about $1.7 billion.
Shell, which has been slowly divesting its Woodside holding, said on Monday its Shell Energy Holdings Australia Limited (SEHAL) unit had struck a deal with two investment banks over the sale of 71.6 million Woodside shares for A$31.10 ($23.79) apiece.
Tyler Crowe: (TMFDirtyBird):Aug 17, 2017
Like so many other integrated oil and gas companies, Royal Dutch Shell‘s (NYSE:RDS-A) (NYSE:RDS-B) goal of the past several years was to preserve capital by any means possible in the short term without giving up too much of the future. Based on the company’s most recent earnings report, it has done a pretty good job of achieving that first goal. The second part? That is all up to what Shell’s management does from here.There were several hints on the company’s most recent conference call that suggest Shell has developed a new playbook that looks very different than its prior one. Here are quotes from that conference call that show Shell’s possible future.
Shell has been trying to pull off an elaborate corporate shift over the past couple of years. It wanted to absorb and integrate BG Group into Shell, unload about $30 billion in assets from the combined company to lower total debt levels, reduce operating costs and capital spending, and get back to generating enough cash to cover capital expenditures and dividends. To make this transformation even more challenging, it was trying to do it in a low oil price environment.
Based on the company’s most recent performance, it looks like management has pulled it off. Here’s CEO Ben van Beurden taking stock of the situation.
Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden has said he is very supportive of Malcolm Turnbull’s moves to impose export restrictions to increase domestic supply on the east coast, where Shell runs the Queensland Curtis LNG project.
But the oil major has revealed there have been some unspecified operational problems at QCLNG, which exports coal-seam gas from Gladstone.
Speaking on a second-quarter earnings call in London last night, Mr Van Beurden backed the Prime Minister’s intervention in the markets, which gives the government the power to restrict exports from any LNG project that is not a “net contributor” to domestic markets.
July 27, 2017 12:23 PM EDT
The image of a driver slurping an iced latte while pulling a Mustang up to the drive-in window of a fast-food joint is either your idea of a capitalist apotheosis or civilization’s decadent demise.
Or … it’s what flashed through your mind as you listened to Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s earnings call on Thursday.
Jessica Uhl, Shell’s chief financial officer, at one point talked up the oil major’s marketing business:
We’re the world’s largest fuel retailer. Every day, Shell serves more than 30 million customers across our 43,000 sites in close to 80 countries. That is more sites than Starbucks; it is more than McDonald’s.
Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch/Shell is shifting its focus toward downstream operations like refining and chemicals and away from traditional upstream activities like exploring for oil and gas, the Financieele Dagblad said on Wednesday.
This shift is likely to become even clearer when the company publishes its second quarter figures on Thursday, the paper said.
Shell’s investment in exploration slumped to $157m in the first quarter of 2017 from an annual quarterly average of between $500m to $600m in recent years, the paper points out. This is partly due to the group’s recent acquisition of the BG Group which has large deep-sea reserves off the coast of Brazil.
Written by Mark Lammey –
The group, which is headquartered in London and the Netherlands, received a tax credit of £111million from the UK government last year primarily as a result of North Sea decommissioning costs.
About £90million worth of UK tax credits were linked to the Brent field and other northern North Sea projects.
Earlier this year, Shell submitted its plans for decommissioning Brent, a process expected to take about a decade.
In May, the Brent Delta topside was delivered to Able UK’s yard in Hartlepool for scrapping.
The investment thesis for Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS-A) (NYSE:RDS-B)radically changed back in 2015, when the company acquired BG Group. The idea of combining these two companies held a lot of promise, but investors would only benefit if management could successfully integrate the company, divest itself of some lower-return businesses, and lower the debt load it took on to get the deal done.
It wasn’t an easy task, but Shell’s most recent couple of earnings reports suggest that management has pulled it off. Here’s a look at its latest earnings release and what management has done recently to get the company one step closer to realizing the potential of that investment thesis laid out a couple of years ago.
MARK WILLIAMSON: 5 MAY 2017
ROYAL Dutch Shell’s new finance chief has said the company will continue to invest in the North Sea where it is making good returns but declined to rule out selling off more UK assets.
Speaking after Shell posted a 140 per cent increase in first quarter profits, Jessica Uhl said the North Sea remains important to the firm although rationalisation moves will leave it with a much reduced presence in the area.
The oil and gas giant agreed in January to sell a portfolio of mature assets which account for around half its UK production to Chrysaor for up to $3.8 billion.
Written by Mark Lammey – 30/01/2017 7:48 am
Investors monitoring the fourth quarter results of Shell and BP must look beyond the top line figures to get a good reading of the firms’ vital signs.
Iain Armstrong, divisional director at Brewin Dolphin, said the fourth quarter was notoriously hard to predict as oil and gas deliveries tended to be down.
Mr Armstrong said the two majors’ headline figures could be disappointing, unless strong demand from China gives them a boost.
He also said Shell should be in a position to sell more of its North Sea assets, thanks to improved oil prices and the BG Group acquisition showing signs of fruition.
from an old EP hand:
Another american woman. I do not know her, she must be very clever. But Shell has not had a lot of luck with senior american women. Do I need to mention the Cook woman? Or the Boynton woman?
And as a total outsider, I must observe that this Uhl woman is a bit tainted. She worked for Enron in the top years of all the scandals and in a very senior position.
We now know that the people working in Enron in that period might be the cleverest in the business, but not the most ethical ones. And for a finance director only the highest ethical standards should apply. A huge risk IMHO.
A finance boss at Royal Dutch Shell who was tipped to take over the top job has suddenly left – just days after he sold stock worth £1million.
Credited with leading the firm’s £41billion takeover of oil and gas group BG last year, Simon Henry was a key lieutenant of chief executive Ben van Beurden.
But the 55-year-old’s departure was announced yesterday to the shock of the markets. Relatively unknown internal finance executive Jessica Uhl has been appointed in his place.
It emerged Henry sold more than £1million of shares on December 1, within 24 hours of the historic Opec deal to cut production that then sent the price of oil soaring.
by Rakteem Katakey: 15 December 2016, 16:47 GMT
Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s appointment of Jessica Uhl as finance chief on Thursday posed one simple question for many of the analysts who follow Europe’s largest oil company: “Who?”
The 48-year-old U.S. citizen, currently head of finance for Shell’s Integrated Gas unit — a key cash cow since this year’s acquisition of BG Group Plc — will take over from Simon Henry in March. Having been at the oil major for 12 years, exclusively in finance, she has “in-depth knowledge” to execute its cash-generation plans, according to Shell.
By Karolin Schaps | LONDON
Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry will step down in March after seven years in the post and be replaced by Jessica Uhl, a finance executive in Shell’s gas business.
Henry, a 55-year-old Shell veteran, was one of the executives who oversaw the $54 billion (43.27 billion pound) acquisition of BG Group, which completed in February, and the integration of the gas company which turned Shell into the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) trader.
Royal Dutch Shell executive Jessica Uhl has been elevated to chief financial officer for global operations.
Uhl, the current executive vice president of finance for integrated gas, begins her new post in March and will continue to work at The Hague. She will replace CFO Simon Henry, who will assist with the transition through June.
Before joining Shell in 2004, Uhl was a director of project development and later a vice president of corporate development for Enron in Houston and Panama.
Uhl also will serve as an executive director of Shell and sit on the executive committee. Shell CEO Ben van Beurden praised Uhl’s promotion.
Caitlin Morrison deputy digital editor at City A.M: Thursday 15 December 2016 8:47am
Royal Dutch Shell announced today that finance chief Simon Henry will step down in March 2017, to be replaced by Jessica Uhl.
Henry – who was appointed to the Lloyds Bank board in 2014 – has been with Shell for over 30 years, and has been chief financial officer for seven.
“I have been privileged to spend the past 34 years working with great colleagues, in a great company,” said Henry.
“Together we have made a difference in an industry that really matters to so many people around the world. I wish Jessica every success in the role, and am confident that she and Shell will deliver a world class investment, in the most responsible and sustainable way.”
Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) will replace Simon Henry as chief financial officer on March 9, 2017 with Jessica Uhl, a financial executive in Shell’s gas business, the company said on Thursday.
Henry will remain available to the company until June 30, 2017, Shell said. It gave no reason for his departure.
“Jessica combines an external perspective with broad Shell experience and is a highly regarded executive,” Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said.
Uhl joined Shell in 2004 and was previously employed at Enron and Citibank in the U.S. and Panama.
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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: 
MORE DETAILS:
MORE DETAILS: After a solicitor acting for Shell threatened to make the litigation "drawn out and difficult" with the intention of draining the resources of a financially weaker opponent, my late father (Alfred Donovan) and I decided to mount a wide-ranging campaign as a counter-measure. We jointly founded the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group, which nearly 15% of Shell UK retailers joined. We regularly conducted ethical surveys involving up to 1500 Shell petrol stations. All responses were opened and authenticated by an independent solicitor who supplied Affidavits confirming the results. In whole page announcements in trade magazines (examples above) we challenged Shell to commission and publish the resuits of independent research asking the same questions and offering respondents GUARANTEED anonymity. Shell never took up the invitation. Instead it asked the UK Advertising Standards Authority to investigate our Shell surveys. No problems were found. The head-cut image of Alfred Donovan appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. 
