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Royal Dutch Shell to weigh vaccine mandate, firing staff on resistance
Sep. 09, 2021 11:22 AM ET Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.B)By: Niloofer Shaikh, SA News Editor 30 Comments
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Royal Dutch Shell to weigh vaccine mandate, firing staff on resistance
Sep. 09, 2021 11:22 AM ET Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.B)By: Niloofer Shaikh, SA News Editor 30 Comments
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Jun. 13, 2021 7:19 PM ET Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A), RDS.BBy: Josh Fineman, SA News Editor
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Nord Stream 2’s completion a ‘fait accompli,’ Blinken tells House panel
Jun. 07, 2021 2:25 PM ETBASFY, ENGIY…By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
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Big Oil’s Very Bad Wednesday
May 30, 2021 11:55 PM ETBNO, CVX, DBE… MV Financial
Just 100 km left to complete Nord Stream 2 pipeline, ambassador says
May 10, 2021 11:43 AM ET Public Joint Stock Company Gazprom (OGZPY)By Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Shell sees 70%-complete Pennsylvania petchem project operational in 2022
Mar. 12, 2021, 4:31 PM ETRoyal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A) By Carl Surran, SA News Editor 8 Comments
Shell resumes LNG shipments from world’s largest floating structure
Jan. 11, 2021 11:46 AM ET Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)By Carl Surran, SA News Editor (Comments)
Shell to raise investment plan for Mexican ultra-deepwater field to $345M
Aug. 28, 2020 5:43 PM ET|About: Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)|By: Carl Surran, SA News EditorMexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission approves Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDS.A, RDS.B) request to carry out all permitted activities in its exploration plan for the ultra-deepwater Xochicalco oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico.
Shell will drill a well at depths of five miles trying to reach a Wilcox formation, with prospective reserves of as much as 562M boe, boosting its investment in the play to $345.8M from $104M in the original exploration plan, which was first approved in June 2019.
Shell, Pieridae to try again after Alberta regulator blocks license transfers
May 15, 2020 4:58 PM ET|About: Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Shell poised for investment in Nigeria LNG venture
|About: Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)|By: Carl Surran, SA News EditorRoyal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) says all conditions have been met for the final investment decision on a new liquefied natural gas processing unit at Nigeria LNG, including a formal commitment from the groups expected to provide financing for the project.
Nigeria LNG is a joint venture, with 49% owned by Nigerian National Petroleum, 26% by Shell, 15% by Total (NYSE:TOT) and 10% by Eni (NYSE:E).
Once operational, the new unit Train 7 will add 8M metric tons/year of capacity to the Bonny Island facility, taking the total to ~30M mt/year.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) says it will seek to sell two U.S. refineries, in Alabama and Washington state, the latest step in the drive by European oil majors to reduce their refining footprints.
The Mobile, Ala., facility has a crude capacity of 79K bbl/day and is oriented toward chemicals.
A sale of the Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes, Wash., with a 145K bbl/day processing capacity, would limit Shell’s U.S. refining presence to the Gulf Coast, where its two main facilities are the Convent and Norco refineries in Louisiana.
Liquefied natural gas is selling at the lowest price on record in Asia, a troubling sign for U.S. energy producers who have relied on overseas shipments of shale gas amid a weak domestic market.
Asian LNG prices fell to $3/MMBtu today, plunging from above $5/MMBtu as recently as Jan. 15, as a glut in the commodity spreads from the U.S. all over the globe.
“The fundamentals were already really weak” even before the coronavirus outbreak stalled economic activity in China, says Ira Joseph, head of gas and power analytics at S&P Global Platts. “The whole market is really oversupplied.”
Equinor (NYSE:EQNR) and partner Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) say they have paid a combined $355M to jointly acquire Schlumberger’s (NYSE:SLB) 49% interest in Argentina’s onshore Bandurria Sur block.
Each partner bought a 24.5% interest in the block that covers ~56K gross acres in the central area of the Vaca Muerta play.
The two companies also reached a preliminary agreement with 51%-owner YPF to acquire an additional 11% interest, which would give Equinor and Shell each a 30% non-operated interest and YPF owning 40% interest and continuing as operator.
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About: Shell Midstream Partners, L.P. (SHLX), Includes: RDS.A
Power Hedge: Macro, energy, alternative energy, contrarian
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) -3% pre-market and trades nearly 4% lower in London despite beating Q3 earnings estimates, as the company warns global economic conditions could slow the timetable for its $25B share buyback program.
“Prevailing weak macroeconomic conditions and challenging outlook inevitably create uncertainty about the pace of reducing gearing to 25% and completing the share buyback program within the 2020 time frame,” CEO Ben van Beurden says.
Gearing – the ratio between debt and market cap – rose in the quarter to 27.9% from 23.1% a year earlier.
Just Energy (NYSE:JE) +4.7% after-hours on news it agreed to sell its U.K. operations to Shell Energy Retail Ltd. (RDS.A, RDS.B) for ~C$17M.
JE says the sale of Hudson Energy Supply UK will help narrow its geographic focus and concentrate on its core operations.
In addition, JE says it has identified another C$20M/year in cost savings, to bring total annualized cost savings initiatives announced so far to C$60M.
The company also says the strategic review process initiated in June is ongoing, and it has not set a specific timeframe for the conclusion of the review.
*Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) asks U.S. regulators to extend the time required to complete the Lake Charles liquefied natural gas export project in Louisiana by five years to 2025.
*Shell says the delay is due to its takeover of the project after its 2016 acquisition of BG Group caused it to re-evaluate and strike new agreements, according to a letter dated last Friday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
*The project, a 50-50 venture Energy Transfer (NYSE:ET), would convert an existing import and regasification facility in Lake Charles into a multi-train, 16.45M mt/year facility.
As part of the project, Shell would build an MEG plant at the site that it could approve as early as 2020, pending final engineering, design and investment decisions, according to the Louisiana Economic Development.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) is moving to sell its stake in Indonesia’s $15B Abadi liquefied natural gas project, Reuters reports, part of its ongoing asset disposal program to raise cash to help pay for its $54B purchase of BG Group in 2015.
Shell hopes to raise ~$1B from the sale of its 35% stake in the Abadi project, according to the report.
Project construction was due to start in 2018 but was delayed in 2016 until at least 2020 after Indonesian authorities instructed a switch from an offshore to an onshore facility.
Japan’s JERA says it signed an agreement with a Mitsubishi unit to buy as much as 1.2M mt/year of liquefied natural gas from the Royal Dutch Shell-led (RDS.A -0.6%) LNG Canada project.
The heads of agreement is for ~15 years starting from April 2024, says JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power (OTCPK:TKECF) and Chubu Electric Power (OTC:CHUEF) and the world’s top buyer of liquefied natural gas.
Buyers from the project so far include trading house Vitol as well as Asian utilities such as Tokyo Gas, Toho Gas and Korea Gas.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A +0.3%) could ramp up acquisitions of electricity producers to achieve its target of becoming the world’s biggest power company by the 2030s, Bernstein analysts say.
Shell must produce 214 terawatt hours of clean power every year by 2035 to become the biggest low-carbon electricity provider, which Bernstein says could be achieved through organic growth, ultimately managing 61 GW of power capacity, but the company probably will want to move faster and expand acquisitions of electricity producers.
The sale brought in the most revenue from such an event since the oil price downturn, with $244M in high offers received, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Anadarko Petroleum (APC -0.7%) and Hess (NYSE:HES) were the next highest bidders by dollar amount of high bids, totaling $24M and $18M respectively.
Equinor (NYSE:EQNR) placed the apparent high bid of the sale, offering $24.4M for Mississippi Canyon Block 801, and teaming up with Kosmos Energy (NYSE:KOS) to win Keathley Canyon Block 964 with a $7M bid.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A +0.4%) urges the Trump administration to tighten restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production, instead of weakening them as planned.
In unusually frank terms, Shell’s U.S. chief Gretchen Watkins told the CERAWeek conference today that the Environmental Protection Agency needs to tighten rules to plug methane leaks, saying “We don’t usually tell governments how to do their job but we’re ready to break with that and say, ‘Actually, we want to tell you how to do your job.'”
|About: Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS.A)| By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Colombia’s government says it signed two offshore exploration and production contracts with Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) that will require the company to make $100M in initial investments.
Shell’s investment could surpass $650M if exploration continues, according to the president of Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons Agency.
The government recently modified contractual terms for offshore exploration and launched a new process that allows companies to apply to explore in areas of interest, offering 20 blocks as part of a strategy to boost the oil sector.
Egypt expects investments of at least $750M-$800M in the first stage of exploration in the 12 concessions, Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla says.
The Dutch High Court says it will consider demands on Jan. 17 seeking an immediate end to gas production from the Groningen field, after the government said it would cut output gradually.
The High Court says it received 26 objections to the plan, expressing concerns about seismic risks caused by drilling and demanding an urgent halt in production.
Analysts say the court is unlikely to grant an immediate halt because the Netherlands still depends on Groningen gas for a significant part of its energy supply.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) says China has awarded it a license to independently trade oil products in the country’s domestic wholesale oil market, allowing it to carry out purchases and sales of oil products for its customers in the Chinese market.
“The wholesale business of refined products has long been dominated by Chinese national oil companies and is typically reserved for Chinese companies,” says Kang Wu, head of S&P Global Platts Asia analytics. “The latest license to a wholly-owned foreign company is unique and set to increase the competitiveness of the wholesale market in China.”
Dec. 18, 2018 7:06 AM ET
Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) is investing in upstream projects that are capable of earning a decent return in most oil pricing environments. The US Gulf of Mexico is one of the energy giant’s core upstream plays for this reason. In May 2018, Royal Dutch Shell plc reached first-oil at the Kaikias project in the Gulf of Mexico a year ahead of schedule. Reducing the Kaikias project’s total development costs by 30% allowed Royal Dutch Shell plc to announce that it will break even on that endeavor when realizing just $30 per barrel of oil sold. Next year, the Appomattox development in the US GoM is expected to reach first-oil and Royal Dutch Shell plc has already achieved major cost savings at that project. Farther out, the Vito development in the US GoM is expected to achieve first-oil by 2021. Let’s dig in.
Gas production at the earthquake-prone Groningen field will drop by at least 75% to below 5B cm/year in the next five years, the Dutch government says, as measures to reduce demand for Groningen gas are working ahead of schedule.
The government decided this year to shut down in 2030 what was once Europe’s largest natural gas field, citing several earthquakes over decades of extraction that damaged thousands of homes and buildings.
Production is set to drop to 19.4B cm in the year that began in October, already down 65% from its peak of 54B cm in 2013.
Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) (RDS.B) is an integrated oil company, one of the largest in the world. The company has a market cap of more than $250 billion and pays investors a very respectable dividend in the high-single digits. As we will see throughout this article, Royal Dutch Shell’s asset portfolio, growth, and potential make the company a strong investment.
Royal Dutch Shell has an incredibly strong asset portfolio that will provide it with both strong production and strong cash flow.
Nov. 12, 2018 11:13 AM ET
My high conviction investment thesis in Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.B) is based on three success pillars. The first pillar is growth in net income, accompanied by a significant rise in free cash flow. The second pillar is shareholder friendliness, or how Shell treats its shareholders well. The third pillar, as in with every investment, is the current compelling valuation of shares
In the third quarter, Shell generated adjusted net income in the amount of $5.6 billion, up a whopping 37 percent compared to the third quarter of last year. Earnings were 70 cents a share, up 40 percent year over year. More importantly, the company’s growth is well balanced between its different divisions. The upstream division (oil exploration) generated adjusted net income of1.88$ billion, compared to a meager 562$ million during the third quarter of 2017.
Callum Turcan: October 17, 2018
Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) is making another big bet on liquefied natural gas, this time in Canada. On October 1, 2018, Royal Dutch Shell plc and its partners announced a positive investment decision on the ~US$31 billion (~40 billion Canadian dollars) Canada LNG venture. The goal is to bring an LNG export facility online in Kitimat, British Columbia, to take advantage of both its existing infrastructure (deep-water ports, roads, electricity grids) and its easy access to Asian markets. While I am a shareholder of Royal Dutch Shell, that doesn’t mean I want to be a cheerleader for every decision the company makes. Here is what I view as a very reasonable assessment of LNG Canada, highlighting both the pros and cons of this endeavor. Let’s dig in.
| By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
An energy consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) and Eni (NYSE:E) developing the Karachaganak gas condensate field will pay $1.1B to Kazakhstan’s government to settle a profit-sharing dispute, the country’s energy ministry says.
Kazakhstan says its production sharing agreement with the consortium also will amend terms so that it will receive a higher share of future revenues from one of the country’s biggest hydrocarbon fields.
| By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
| By Carl Surran, SA News Editor
|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) is an oil giant that has benefited from the rally of the oil price in the last 12 months, just like its peers. However, the oil major has paid the same dividend for 18 consecutive quarters, as it froze its dividend at the onset of the downturn of the oil market that began in 2014. Therefore, the big question is whether the company will raise its dividend in the upcoming quarters.
Despite the downturn that began in 2014, Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX) and Total (TOT) have continued to raise their dividends, albeit at a low single-digit rate. BP (BP) followed the same path as Shell and froze its dividend for 15 consecutive quarters, but eventually raised it in the running quarter, thanks to the strength of the oil price and the brightening outlook of the oil market. Therefore, Shell is the only oil major that has kept its dividend flat for such a long period.
| By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Introduction
We were a little shocked at Shell’s, (RDS.A,RDS.B) decline on it’s Q-2 earnings release. Any serious review of operations could have foretold it. When you sell off $30 bn worth of assets that produce oil, you’re going to see a decline of this type. I mean seriously, we’re talking about 40K BOPD essentially on a company that produces over 3.5mm BOPD.
Perhaps large investors were wondering if the company is allocating capital in sufficient amounts to maintain and grow production. When we look we see that the company has been investing at a consistent rate to maintain production longer term.
By Zoltan Ban: 20 July 2018
By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor: 20 July 2018
By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor: 12 July 2018
|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Jun. 30, 2018 12:54 AM ET
Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) has been actively focusing on what kind of business it wants to be involved in. Part of this activity is to change the composition of its assets. It has been selling plants and oil licenses, and invested where it wants to position the company.
Disposals have also been done to reduce the total debt level. Much of the debt came from the $35 billion acquisition of BG Group back in March of 2016.
Early this year, Shell communicated that its plans were to leave oil and gas operations in as many as 10 countries and instead focus more heavily on gas-rich Australia and shale opportunities in the United States.
|By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor
Production at the Groningen natural gas field will come in lower than expected this year as the Dutch government works to end production completely by 2030 in an effort to limit seismic risks in the region.
Output will have fallen to 19B-20B cm in the year ending October 2018, the Dutch gas sector regulator says, below the original cap of 21.6B cm set for the year and down from 24B cm last year.
The Groningen field is a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) and Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM).