Libra Consortium takes final investment decision on Mero-3 FPSO in Brazil’s pre-salt

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug. 25, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Shell announced today a final investment decision taken by the Libra Consortium, operated by Petrobras, to contract the Mero-3 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to be deployed at the Mero field within the offshore Santos Basin in Brazil.

This is the third production system to be deployed in the Mero field, with final investment decisions to contract the Mero-1 and Mero-2 FPSOs already taken.  Each unit has a daily operational capacity rate of 180,000 barrels of oil equivalent, with production coming online over the next four years. The Pioneiro de Libra FPSO (50,000 barrels of oil equivalent/day) has been producing at Mero since 2017 and is a key source of information for the consortium to aid further development and productivity of the field, reservoir and wells. read more

SINGAPORE, April 14 (Reuters) – GCL Oil& Natural Gas Co Ltd has entered a framework agreement with Royal Dutch Shell to explore setting up a joint venture based in eastern China to market and trade liquefied natural gas (LNG), the privately owned Chinese company said on Tuesday.

The proposed JV would secure LNG supplies from Shell and market the fuel to a receiving terminal which GCL is planning in Jiangsu province, GCL said in a statement.

A Shell spokeswoman confirmed the agreement. read more

Monday February 17 2020, The Times

Royal Dutch Shell has thrown its weight behind a Chinese-backed energy storage venture building what is claimed to be Europe’s largest battery in Wiltshire.

The Anglo-Dutch energy group will use a 100-megawatt battery near the village of Minety to provide back-up electricity to the National Grid when supplies of wind and solar power dip. The battery can be charged when electricity is cheap and then discharged at peak times when prices are high.

The project has been bankrolled by CNIC, the Chinese investment fund, and China Huaneng Group, a state utility company that is also constructing the battery. read more

NEW YORK, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has banned business travel to and from China’s Hubei province due to the coronavirus, the company said in a statement.

Shell has restricted non-essential business travel to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

(Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault)

SOURCE

NEW YORK, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has banned business travel to and from China’s Hubei province due to the coronavirus, the company said in a statement.

Shell has restricted non-essential business travel to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

(Reporting By Jessica Resnick-Ault)

SOURCE

BEIJING/GUANGZHOU, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) to build its first commercial-scale polycarbonate production plant in southern city of Huizhou in China.

Polycarbonate is a transparent and impact-resistant polymer, widely used to make vehicle headlights and LED spotlights.

“(Huizhou city government) is in touch with Shell and CNOOC for detailed investment and production plans,” said Liu Ji, mayor of Huizhou, on the sideline of a conference in Guangzhou on Thursday. read more

Extracts

(Bloomberg) — A slowdown in gas demand growth in China, the driver of global use over the past two years, is expected to slacken further, adding to investor concern as supply continues to build.

Consumption in 2021-2025 will grow at a slower pace than it has in the current five-year period, a researcher at China’s economic planning department said at the BloombergNEF summit in Shanghai on Wednesday. Furthermore, a weaker economy and rising imports via pipeline could shrink the share of liquefied natural gas in the overall Chinese market, according to gas utility ENN Energy Holdings Ltd. read more

By Kelly Gilblom: 29 March 2019, 11:13 GMT

*Company likely to expand acquisitions of electricity producers

*Shell must manage 61 gigawatts of clean power in 2030s

Royal Dutch Shell Plc could ramp up acquisitions of electricity producers to achieve its target of becoming the world’s biggest power company by the 2030s, according to analysis by Sanford C Bernstein Ltd.

To become the biggest low-carbon electricity provider, the company must produce 214 terawatt-hours of clean power every year by 2035, the analysis shows. That’s 11 percent more than Egypt, a country of nearly 100 million people, generated last year, according to data from BP Plc. read more

Jan. 2, 2019 8:21 AM ET| By: Carl Surran, SA News Editor

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.” read more

China signaled its openness for business with a raft of deals that’ll give oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell Plc new opportunities to develop fields in partnership with the nation’s biggest offshore explorer.

Written by Bloomberg – 18/12/2018 9:29 am

China National Offshore Oil Corp. said in Beijing on Tuesday that it had inked oil and gas accords with nine firms. The signing ceremony followed President Xi Jinping’s address to party cadres marking 40 years of reform and broadly underlining the nation’s commitment to global trade.

The agreements cover 64,000 square kilometers in the Pearl River basin, to a depth of up to 3,000 meters. In addition to the Netherlands-based Shell, France’s Total SA and U.S.-based Chevron Corp. were also awarded parcels. All three majors hold existing production sharing contracts with CNOOC. The other firms involved are: ConocoPhillips, Equinor ASA, Husky Energy Inc., Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co., Roc Oil Co., and SK Innovation Co. read more

Shell exit from Greater Sunrise paves way for Chinese

East Timor has bought Shell’s stake in the Greater Sunrise project, giving it a majority share and putting more impetus behind the project’s development

East Timor’s decision to buy out Shell’s stake in the Greater Sunrise fields has revived momentum in the project, which will require billions of dollars of investment, and paves the way for Chinese participation.

Dili agreed on Tuesday to pay $300 million for Shell’s 26.56% stake in the fields, which straddle the Australian and Timorese sea beds. The move follows a recent agreement to buy out ConocoPhillips’ share of the fields.

The Greater Sunrise project was considered to be politically stranded and of negligible… read more

• PETROCHEMICALS
• 25 Oct 2018 | 06:46 UTC
• Singapore

• AuthorFumiko Dobashi
• EditorNorazlina Juma’at
• CommodityPetrochemicals

Singapore — China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC, and Shell International Petroleum Company Limited signed a memorandum of understanding to build an integrated petrochemical site at the Nanhai site in Huizhou, Guangdong, Shell said in a statement late Wednesday.

In May this year, the two companies started up the second steam cracker at Nanhai, which has an ethylene production capacity of 1.2 million mt/year. The complex’s downstream units include styrene monomer and propylene oxide. This MOU will expand their current collaboration, Shell said in the statement. read more

By Zheng Xin | China Daily | Updated: 2018-10-23

Global energy giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC plans to set up 10,000 new gas stations worldwide by 2025, with 5,000 in the five high-growth markets of China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Russia.

The company is also looking to introduce more electric vehicle charging stations, and increase sales of fluid process oils and grease to support electric-powered trains and vehicles in China.

The move comes after its first electric-vehicle charging station entered service in Tianjin in September. read more

The $900 million (679.79 million pounds) power project, being built by Sinolam LNG affiliate Sinolam Smarter Energy LNG Power Co, expects to begin taking deliveries of the super-cooled natural gas in 2020, the advisors told Reuters late Wednesday.

The deal with a Shell trading unit comes as a trade dispute between the United States and China has put global LNG exports in the spotlight. This week, China imposed tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods, including a 10 percent tax on LNG imports effective Monday, in response to the U.S. slapping tariffs on some $200 billion of Chinese goods. read more

By Zheng Xin | China Daily | Updated: 2018-08-23 09:12

Global energy giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc has announced plans to triple the number of gas stations it has in China to 3,500 by 2025, in response to the recent lifting of restrictions on foreign investment in the sector.

“Shell is already the leading international oil retailer in China, running 1,300 sites via strategic joint ventures and two wholly owned companies, and we aspire to triple the size of our network by 2025,” said John Abbott, downstream director, Royal Dutch Shell. read more

Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, said governments need to lead if the world is to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement: TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

Emily Gosden, Energy Editor: July 6 2018

The boss of Royal Dutch Shell has said it is easier to make progress on climate change in countries such as China than in “noisy democracies” such as Britain.

Ben van Beurden, chief executive, complained yesterday that the world was spending too much time and effort arguing about how to tackle global warming instead of taking action.

“In places like China it works very well, governments work very gratefully with us and adopt really incredibly pragmatic and powerful policies, sensible, etc. Here, there are more participants in the debate, let me put it that way,” Mr Van Beurden said. read more

Oil majors to bid on choice stakes in Brazil’s offshore

Alexander Alper, Marta Nogueira: JUNE 7, 2018

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Executives from oil majors were set to gather in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday to compete for stakes in Brazil’s pre-salt oil play, home to some of the world’s most alluring offshore geology, as rising oil prices boost appetite for expensive offshore projects.

A record 16 companies, including Chevron Corp, BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc registered to bid for four blocks in the offshore Campos and Santos basins, part of the so-called fourth pre-salt auction on Thursday. read more

Nikkei staff writers: April 21, 2018 05:23 JST

TOKYO — An international consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell and includes China National Petroleum Corp., Korea Gas and Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp. is moving ahead on a long-stalled liquefied natural gas plant in Canada, as environmental concerns drive Asia toward cleaner energy sources.

Japanese plant engineering company JGC and American counterpart Fluor jointly won orders to design and build the project in the British Columbia community of Kitimat on Canada’s Pacific coast for an estimated $14 billion. read more

By Chris Tomlinson March 9, 2018

Coal is too dirty. Oil is too messy. And renewables are too intermittent. But natural gas is just right.

Energy companies of every stripe have fallen in love with the stepchild of fossil fuels. No longer considered an annoying byproduct of oil drilling, natural gas’ multiple applications and relative cleanliness guarantee it a place in the future energy mix.

The CEO of French energy giant Total, Patrick Pouyanné, joked that he runs a gas and oil company, rather than oil and gas, during his appearance at CERAWeek by IHS Markit, the annual energy conference in Houston. Every major international energy company in the world is emphasizing gas over oil. read more

China’s energy giants return to Asian LNG market as sellers

“We expect LNG demand to continue to grow in China this year,” Royal Dutch Shell’s Steve Hill said on Friday, citing the government’s commitment to cutting back on coal.

LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Falling industrial demand and mild weather have turned China’s energy giants into sellers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia for the first time since last year’s massive import spree.

Chinese players were on the receiving end of last year’s doubling of LNG prices, largely driven by their rapid shift to gas to combat coal smog as well as elevated regional demand for the fuel.

Although a CNOOC executive last week warned producers not to expect a similar payday in 2018, industry executives said they were not unduly concerned by the blip, saying Chinese demand would continue to grow. read more

Jessica Jaganathan: 9 MARCH 2018

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is planning to build a truck loading facility at its Hazira liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on India’s west coast as it looks to meet demand from industrial users, a top company official said on Friday.

The facility, which could be ready by next year, will be used to supply industrial demand through trucking in places that can’t access supply from the grid, said Steve Hill, executive vice president at Shell Energy.

“It has a big potential growth … in India because energy supply reliability is a big issue in India,” he said at a media briefing in Singapore, referring to LNG being transported in trucks to industrial users.

“There hasn’t been as much supply infrastructure in place, but some of the import terminals are now putting the truck loading facilities in place so that’s opening up that option.”

LNG trucking works well for locations off-grid, with China and India the two obvious markets, Hill said. read more

Forecasters at Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil major, have predicted that global oil demand could peak within a decade as electric cars and other clean energy technologies gain larger market shares.

March 5, 2018 Updated: March 5, 2018 8:42pm

Houston’s energy industry, which drives the local economy, has much brighter days ahead as global oil demand climbs, shale production booms and U.S. crude grabs larger shares of global markets, according to forecasts, industry officials and analysts.

The United States is already pumping oil at record levels above 10 million barrels a day, surpassing Saudi Arabia, and may take over from Russia as the world’s production leader by the end of 2018. Over the next five years, daily U.S. production is expected to climb 3.5 million barrels, or 35 percent, to more than 13 million barrels, according to a forecast by the International Energy Agency, which monitors the global oil industry. read more

A consortium — including oil producers BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Statoil ASA — has been developing a blockchain-based platform for physical oil trades.

Every day, dozens of oil tankers — some as long as five football fields — set sail for ports around the world carrying millions of barrels of crude and a piece of paper that generations of sea captains have held as dear as their cargo.

The bill of lading is the document that verifies ownership of a commodity that can be worth more than $122 million per ship. Without it, buyers and sellers who trade $2.7 billion of crude daily are unable to do business in an ocean-going tanker market that supplies almost half of the oil consumed globally. read more

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 12 February 2018 – Today, Oath announces a global deal with Mediacom and Shell to take the energy brand’s “Make the Future” campaign into its next phase. The new phase brings the content of its “On Top of the World” music video to life through a crafted WebGL “Globe” activation, created by Oath’s RYOT Studio global solutions team in collaboration with UNIT9: allowing people to explore the five cleaner energy projects featured within the music video through its interactive design. The music video itself features five global artists and celebrates five cleaner energy solutions supported by Shell across four continents that are helping provide access to cleaner energy and support local communities.  This content will reach Oath’s millennial and mobile audiences across five markets (US, UK, Brazil, Singapore, and India) using Tumblr and its Yahoo Gemini and BrightRoll premium video distribution and syndication channels, driving audiences to the interactive “Globe” to explore the content. read more

FILE PHOTO: Four rigs drill at the Super Pad in Seven Generations Energy’s Kakwa River Project in northwest Alberta, Canada in a photo provided January 19, 2018. Seven Generations Energy Ltd/Handout via REUTERS

Nia Williams: 29 JAN 2018

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The revolution in U.S. shale oil has battered Canada’s energy industry in recent years, ending two decades of rapid expansion and job creation in the nation’s vast oil sands.

Now Canada is looking to its own shale fields to repair the economic damage.

Canadian producers and global oil majors are increasingly exploring the Duvernay and Montney formations, which they say could rival the most prolific U.S. shale fields.

Canada is the first country outside the United States to see large-scale development of shale resources, which already account for 8 percent of total Canadian oil output. China, Russia and Argentina also have ample shale reserves but have yet to overcome the obstacles to full commercial development. read more

Once upon a time, it was only Elon Musk making shoot-for-the-stars statements about the glittering future of electric cars. Now, even the most sober of his rivals are getting in on the act. Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. and BAIC Motor Corp., China’s fourth- and fifth-largest automakers, announced in October and this month that they’ll end deliveries of petroleum-powered cars by 2025. A target for hybrids and electric vehicles to be 90 percent of Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd.’s sales by 2020 is still on track, according to a company presentation last week, despite making up about 1.5 percent of the total in the first half. read more

Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM), BP, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) and other oil companies are spending millions of dollars per year working with automakers including Ford (NYSE:F) and Fiat Chrysler (NYSE:FCAU) to improve the internal combustion engine and help it compete with electric vehicles, WSJreports.

The companies are hoping new, thinner lubricants will help squeeze even more efficiency out of traditional car engines, allowing them to comply with stricter environmental rules and remain relevant as new technologies such as zero-emission electric vehicles emerge. read more

REUTERS STAFF: NOVEMBER 6, 2017 / 7:00 AM

* Asphalt, plastics, chemicals to sustain demand, Shell says

* Shell to double chemicals business by mid-2020s

* Downstream highly independent from oil prices – Shell’s Abbott 

By Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) – While the world braces for the electric-vehicle revolution, Royal Dutch Shell is betting on growing appetite for asphalt and plastics to sustain its century-old oil refining business for the coming decades. read more

The world’s biggest new gas giant has been hiding in plain sight.

Despite some of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, PetroChina Co. is still predominantly viewed through the lens of crude oil. That’s overdue a change.

Oil production in the nine months through September fell 5.2 percent while natural gas climbed 4.5 percent, the Beijing-based company said Monday. Based on those numbers, third-quarter oil production of 224.3 million barrels represented less than 60 percent of the total when set against natural gas output of about 152.1 million barrels of oil equivalent. read more

Zhang Xinsheng, executive chairman of Shell Companies in China. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Editor’s Note:

The Communist Party of China has just concluded its 19th National Congress in Beijing. In the runup to the meeting, China Daily asked business leaders from major multinational companies for their views on economic developments here and the country’s global leadership role.

China Daily: 27 October 2017

Zhang Xinsheng is executive chairman of Shell Companies in China, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the global energy group.

How can China achieve stable and sustainable economic growth? read more

Jillian Ambrose: 17 OCTOBER 2017 • 11:24AM

Royal Dutch Shell will begin construction of a new $10bn petrochemicals site in the gas-rich Marcellus shale basin in the US within the next ten weeks as part of a radical growth plan for its petrochemicals business.

The oil major told investors that global demand for petrochemicals – which are used to manufacture the raw materials used to make plastics, paints and textiles – is set to grow by around 50pc by the end of the decade, making it a key area for the company’s growth. read more

Global oil demand growth will slow to a crawl and gasoline use will peak within the next decade, prompting the world’s biggest energy companies to accelerate the shift to natural gas and chemicals, according to consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

Major crude producers will have to adapt to significant changes in the coming years, but their businesses can grow. Oil consumption will keep expanding until at least 2035 as the petrochemical industry, which provides the building blocks to manufacture everything from plastics to pesticides, makes up for the contraction in some transport fuels, Wood Mackenzie said in a report on Monday. read more

2017 October 5 15:37

Gazprom and Shell have confirmed their interest in implementation of the Baltic LNG project, IAA PortNews correspondent cites Aleksandr Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Board, Gazprom, and Maarten Wetselaar, Integrated Gas and New Energies Director, Shell, as saying at the 7th St. Petersburg International Gas Forum (SPIGF-2017).

“Baltic LNG project will develop and we are participating in it financially”, said Maarten Wetselaar.

According to Shell, global LNG demand is 265 mln t per year and its growth prospects are good, particularly due to the markets of China, India and other Asian countries. read more

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is opening the first Chinese office of its venture capital fund and recruiting three local investment staff there to tap a market where it sees “explosive” growth, the head of the business told Reuters on Thursday.

Shell Technology Ventures (STV), internally known as “Stevie”, is the oil major’s vehicle through which it seeks to stay on top of technological changes in the energy market that could threaten its business, and provide new areas for growth. read more

September 20, 2017, 01:35:00 PM EDT By Zacks Equity Research, Zacks.com

Per Reuters, integrated oil and gas company, Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.Aintends to increase its marketing operations in Asia region. The company’s effort to de-carbonize the energy system was reconfirmed as it targets to attain 20% of its global fuel station sales from electric vehicles recharging and fuels with a lower level of carbon by 2025.

Expanding Asia Operations

The oil major has 43,000 fuel stations in 80 countries and is now trying to reach the fuel markets of China and India, the two most populous countries in the world with high demand for energy. Shell is also eyeing the Indonesian fuel market. The company believes there will be continued growth in the Asian market over the next decade. read more

It’s no secret that oil majors are among the biggest corporate emitters of pollution. What may be surprising is that they’re reducing their greenhouse-gas footprints every year, actively participating in a trend that’s swept up most corporate behemoths.

Sixty-two of the world’s 100 largest companies consistently cut their emissions on an annual basis between 2010 and 2015, with an overall 12 percent decline during that period, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance released ahead of its conference in London on Monday. read more

By Cyril Widdershoven – Sep 16, 2017, 6:00 PM CDT

Supermajor Royal Dutch Shell has decided to divest its Iraqi oil assets in a move to focus on its future in natural gas.

The industry giant is seemingly breaking from its oil heritage to head full speed into the “Golden Age of Gas.” Shell’s decision to leave Iraq’s upstream oil assets is not without risk, however, as the market for natural gas is even more oversupplied than it is for crude oil.

Reuters reported the move first, based on a letter from the Iraqi ministry of oil, followed by a confirmation from Shell. The Dutch heavyweight indicated to the press that its oil asset divestment in Iraq is in line with its strategy to focus more on natural gas and downstream activities. read more

By Tsvetana Paraskova – Sep 12, 2017, 12:30 PM CDT

Shell—one of the oil majors that is increasingly betting on natural gas and low-carbon fuels—is targeting 20 percent of its global fuel station sales to come from electric vehicles recharging and low-carbon fuels by 2025, John Abbott, Downstream Director at Shell, told Reuters in an interview published on Tuesday.

While Shell plans to expand fuel stations in China, India, and Mexico—where it sees growth in this market over the next decade—it would continue to focus on meeting demand for cars running on fuels alternative to gasoline and diesel, Abbott said. read more

SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

* Shell is world’s biggest fuel station operator

* Pilot projects to recharge cars in Europe, California

* Company sees fossil fuel growth in China, India, Mexico

* Focus on downstream earnings as crude price falls 

By Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov

LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell aims to expand marketing operations in Asia and wants 20 percent of sales from its fuel stations worldwide to come from recharging electric vehicles and low carbon fuels by 2025, as the world shifts away from crude.

The Anglo-Dutch firm, with 43,000 fuel stations in 80 countries, aims to expand in China and India, as well as Mexico, where it sees fossil fuel growth in the next decade, John Abbott, the head of refining, trading and marketing, told Reuters. read more

September 11, 2017, 11:40:00 AM EDT By Reuters

By Andy Critchlow

LONDON, Sept 11 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Royal Dutch Shell, looking deeply into its crystal ball, sees a future that’s still heavily dependent on oil. The Anglo-Dutch giant expects crude will continue to play a major role in global energy supply for decades, even in its less oil-friendly scenario. That optimism goes someway to justifying the billions of dollars it continues to invest in exploiting new reserves and expanding its fuel network. But it’s also a view that may place too much faith in the combustion engine – and China staying with its current strategy. read more

Kashagan has been developed by a consortium of China National Petroleum Corp, Exxon Mobil, Eni , Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Inpex and KazMunaiGas.

By Mariya Gordeyeva: SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 / 2:28 PM

ASTANA, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Kazakhstan is aiming for a standalone deal with leading global oil producers on restraining its crude production due to a need to crank up output at its Kashagan field, a Kazakh official said on Thursday. 

The Central Asian nation increased oil and gas condensate output by 9.9 percent in January-July to 49.907 million tonnes, or 1.724 million barrels per day (bpd), exceeding its quota of 1.7 million bpd under a global supply pact. read more

Tristan R. Brown: 14 August 2017

Summary

• This summer has seen the governments of several of the world’s major economies propose to eliminate internal combustion engine vehicles over the next 10-30 years.
• At the same time, Royal Dutch Shell announced several major clean energy investments over the summer in anticipation of a drop-off in petroleum demand.
• This article looks at how Shell’s clean energy investments fit into its energy profile forecasts compared to its peers.

This summer has been filled with the sort of headlines that can give strategic planners in the petroleum & gas sector heartburn. One-upping Germany’s earlier non-binding pledge to ban new internal combustion engine [ICE] vehicles by 2030, the government of France’s new centrist president Emmanuel Macron announced in early July that the country will end sales of ICE vehicles by 2040. This move, which is part of that country’s efforts to comply with its greenhouse gas emission reduction target under 2015’s Paris Climate Agreement, would eliminate gasoline- and diesel-only engines and is aimed at reducing the country’s air pollution as it is at mitigating climate change. Britain intends to do the same by 2050. Even China and India, which have long been posited as important future sources of petroleum demand, are moving to electrify their vehicle fleets: China recently announced that it wants 25% of the country’s vehicles to be “alternative fuel” by 2025, while India is drafting plans to electrify all of its vehicles by 2030. read more

Jul 28 2017 at 9:03 AM

When the boss of Europe’s biggest listed oil company says his next car will be electric, it says a lot about the future of fossil fuels.

Royal Dutch Shell responded to the worst oil-price crash in a generation with its $US54 billion ($68 billion) takeover of BG Group, betting that demand for natural gas will rise as the world shifts to cleaner-burning fuels. Now chief executive officer Ben Van Beurden says the next thing he’ll buy is a car that doesn’t depend on either oil or gas to run. read more

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. read more

By Daniel J. Graeber: July 24, 2017

July 24 (UPI) — The Chinese appetite for liquefied natural gas increased more than 30 percent from last year, according to the latest government data.

The Chinese General Administration of Customs reported LNG imports to China increased dramatically as the country looks to rely less on coal for its energy needs. First half demand was up 38.3 percent from last year.

“The growth rate is higher than the 21.2 percent increase registered in the same period last year, partly encouraged by the lowering policy barriers for LNG from the United States to enter the Chinese market,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported. read more

LONDON (TCA) — In a move presented as glorious and spectacular, oil companies from Russia (Rosneft), China (CNPC), Kazakhstan (Kazmunaygas), Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and Italy (Eni) have teamed up to form a consortium for the exploration and exploitation of what is expected to be a new “giant” located in the very heart of the northern Caspian tectonic structure. The project, if successful and market demand to remain unchanged, should prolong the position of Kazakhstan as a global-scale oil supplier from 2040 till 2080. The Kazakhs are committed to contribute in the order of a billion greenbacks each year from now to the project. No overall picture of the total price tag has been presented so far. read more

Don’t be tone deaf to energy transition concerns of emerging economies, Ben van Beurden tells the World Petroleum Congress.

By Gaurav Sharma in Istanbul, Turkey: July 11, 2017 08:02 BST

Discussions over the global energy mix and the transition to a low carbon global economy should not only focus on Western perspectives, according to Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive officer Ben van Beurden.

Speaking at the 22^nd World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, van Beurden said “too often” energy transition is considered from the perspective of the European or the North American end-user.

“And it is true, that these areas of the world have a historical responsibility for the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere which translates into a responsibility to act today. read more

Jon Yeomans: 10 JULY 2017 • 12:01AM

The Chinese coal industry and stock market debutant Saudi Aramco have been named as the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.

As new data claims to have identified the top 100 emitters of greenhouse gases over the last three decades, a leading NGO has warned that natural  resources companies need to transform their business models to adapt to a low-carbon future.

Just 100 firms are responsible for 71pc of carbon dioxide gases released into the atmosphere since 1988, the year that climate change was first recognised as an international problem, according a report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). read more

By Ryan Maye Handy: 8 July 2017

India hopes to sell only electric vehicles by 2030. China is offering incentives to buy electric cars and investing heavily in renewable technologies. Volvo will scrap the pure internal combustion engine in favor of hybrids and electric cars.

And on Thursday, France announced it plans to ban the sale of diesel and gasoline-fueled cars by 2040.

The world’s major oil companies might disagree when global demand for petroleum will peak, but the news of the past seven months suggests that they should be worried, if they aren’t already. Nations, states and private companies are demanding cleaner energy, leaving the world’s oil producers to face a reckoning that many haven’t yet accepted. read more

U.S. and European oil majors such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron have invested huge sums over the last decade – often more than they have spent on oil – in an attempt to dominate the LNG market, especially through mega-projects in Australia such as Chevron’s Gorgon or Shell’s Prelude.