Posts under ‘LNG’

Sun, 04 December 2011

By A Staff Reporter – MUSCAT — Royal Dutch Shell’s Chief Executive, Peter Voser, has hosted 190 of his most senior management colleagues, at the luxury Shangri-La Hotel in Muscat.

The executives gathered with government dignitaries and business luminaries from around the world to discuss Shell’s global strategy and to celebrate a year of achievements.

The annual meeting, known as the 2011 Senior Executive Forum and usually held in Europe or North America, lasted for three days last month.

Shell is intent on becoming the world’s most competitive and innovative energy company and the event focused on driving greater competitiveness, technological innovation and leadership.

In the past year, Shell has finished building the world’s largest GTL plant, Pearl, in Qatar. Shell has also announced plans to build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas plant (FLNG) off Australia’s north-west coast.

Shell is a joint venture partner with PDO (34 per cent), Oman LNG (30 per cent) and Shell Oman Marketing Company (49 per cent). Oman was chosen as the location for this year’s gathering to signal Shell’s commitment to the country as well as the company’s appreciation for the longstanding working relationship between the two parties.

Speaking to delegates at the opening ceremony, Peter Voser, Shell’s Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are proud of our relationship with Oman, its leadership and the Omani people. We are especially proud of the development of our joint ventures, which have contributed to the growth of the Omani economy and the development of this great nation.”

Peter Voser and other Shell executives met with a wide range of senior Omani guests from Government, businesses and NGOs. There was much lively discussion then and YB Senator Dato’ Sri Idris Jala, Minister in the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Office and Chief Executive Officer, PEMANDU, spoke about “enhancing the role that governments and private enterprise play in developing countries, in contributing to the growth and well being of the economy, in a rapidly evolving world”

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EXTRACTS FROM THE RepRisk WATER SCARCITY REPORT

RepRisk is the leading provider of dynamic business intelligence on environmental social and governance risks.

In 2010, access to clean water received recognition as a basic human right through a majority vote of the United Nations General Assembly. According to the UN, nearly 900 million people have no access to clean drinkable water, almost 1.8 billion live in areas where water is scarce, and a further 1.6 billion live in countries, which lack the infrastructure to extract water from natural sources. The World Bank calculates that by 2030, water demand will exceed supply by 40 percent, as a growing world population demands more water for agricultural, industrial and personal use.

By Emma Rowley

Separately, US rival ExxonMobil said quarterly earnings rose 41pc to $10.3bn as the high oil price offset falling production.

Published in the Business Section of the Telegraph on Friday 28 October 2011

By Motley Fool Staff Posted 9:58PM 11/03/11

EXTRACTS

Last week, my Foolish colleague Alex Planes wrote a superb article offering the conclusion that “Cheap Oil Isn’t Coming Back,” an assessment with which I completely agree. Beyond that, though, I’d add, “And Cheap Gas Has a Brief Future, Too.” With that in mind, it’s crucial to look back at the recent earnings season to garner what we can about which major oil companies appear to offer the biggest boosts for our portfolios.

Shell’s full of LNG
Royal Dutch Shell also doubled its earnings in the past quarter, chalking up a growth rate that one advertisement used to refer to as “a silly millimeter” beneath Chevron’s. The company is casting a major lot with LNG, where it leads the world in production and distribution. That’s a sufficient reason for placing the Anglo-Dutch giant next to Chevron as another member of Big Oil’s most promising trio.

As an indication of the potential in natural gas — obviously including LNG — Shell’s gas earnings jumped by a whopping 40% outside the Americas, while they eked out just a 1% increase in this part of the world. A large part of that massive differential stemmed from the fact that gas is sitting near a paltry $4 in the U.S., while it yielded $15 for Shell in Asia. That being the case, should we deny that the U.S. price is headed for higher ground? Indeed, Asia’s levies appear to be headed even higher.

And then there’s Russia. Several years ago, I began a Motley piece with the observation, “Only a few things are absolutely inevitable in today’s world: death, taxes, and the Russian government’s lusting after energy projects once they’ve been developed by Western companies.” For instance, you’re probably aware that Shell was squeezed out of the operatorship of the country’s Sakhalin-2 project precisely five years ago.

I’m not certain of Shell’s likely future with the Russkies, since, with the world running low on potential major oil finds, the Western companies have displayed a curious tendency of dusting themselves off after having been body-checked by Vladimir Putin’s minions and heading right back into the game.

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NOVEMBER 2, 2011, 4:52 A.M. ET

By DAVID WINNING And DAVID FICKLING

SYDNEY—Australia’s foreign-investment watchdog has pushed back by up to 90 days a decision on the takeover of coal-seam-gas developer Bow Energy Ltd. by a joint venture of Royal Dutch Shell PLC and PetroChina Co.

In a government notice to parliament, the Foreign Investment Review Board said it needed more time to decide whether to approve the 535 million Australian dollar (US$557 million) deal, which would enable Shell and PetroChina’s Arrow Energy venture to expand its proposed gas-export facility in Queensland state.

Such delays are unusual: Around 95% of FIRB decisions are made within a 30-day period set out in law, and so-called interim orders extending the process by 90 days were made just twice during the year ending June 2010, the latest period for which figures are available.

But Arrow said the decision was procedural, to allow the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to complete its review of the deal, due Nov. 24.

“This allows FIRB to defer its decision until the ACCC has completed its review of any competition implications of the transaction,” Arrow said in an emailed statement.

Companies facing such procedural hurdles typically withdraw their FIRB applications and resubmit them later, but that would restart the 30-day clock—and so risk the timetable on the takeover deal. It calls for approval by shareholders and an Australian court in mid-to-late December, according to an announcement Monday from Bow.

Bow’s board has unanimously recommended investors vote in favor of the A$1.52-a-share (US$1.58) offer, and Shell said in September that it expected the transaction to be implemented in January.

Coal-seam gas—methane trapped far below the Earth’s surface—is one of the world’s hottest energy plays. More than A$20 billion was spent in 2008 on coal-seam-gas deals in Australia alone, by companies including Shell, ConocoPhillips and BG Group PLC of the U.K.

In August, Arrow Energy awarded preliminary engineering and design contracts for an export facility at Curtis Island, near Gladstone, producing an initial eight million metric tons of liquefied natuaral gas a year. Acquiring Bow Energy would allow the venture potentially to expand the annual output capacity of each of the facility’s two processing units, known as trains, to 4.6 million tons of LNG.

Write to David Winning at david.winning@dowjones.com and David Fickling at david.fickling@dowjones.com

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Devjyot Ghoshal

Energy-hungry Asia will remain the major growth driver for Shell, though the region’s appetite may diminish slightly next year owing to global uncertainties, the Dutch oil and gas major’s chief executive officer, Peter Voser, said on Monday.

“I think Asia-Pacific for us is the key growth region. We see a lot of growth, and, hopefully, enough growth, that can actually drive the worldwide economy coming out of Asia-Pacific,” Voser said on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week.

“That’s where huge parts of our investment actually go; into Asia or into upstream projects, for example, (from) where the gas finally will go to Asia,” he said.

Shell’s major projects in the region include the deep-water Gumusut field in Malaysia and the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals project in Singapore, the company’s largest petrochemicals investment globally. The company also has a presence in Brunei, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia.

And, while Shell will look to scale up operations within Asia to meet growing demand here, it will also invest elsewhere, including in state-of-the-art equipment, to ensure the supply-side is well bolstered.

“We have recently taken a final investment decision on new technology called ‘Floating LNG’, which will actually allow us to develop smaller gas fields off-shore, have a smaller footprint, and then deliver the LNG to the hungry Asian markets,” Voser said.

Earlier this year, Shell announced it would build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas facility that can produce gas from offshore fields and liquefy it onboard by cooling, at an estimated cost of $11.5 billion. It is likely to be moored 200 km off the Australian coast on completion.

“That’s a ship which we are building. It is 485 metres long, 70 metres wide and 600,000 tonnes heavy with a lot of technology from Shell in it. We are the first, and only one, to drive this. We look at this as one of the drivers for our growth aspiration in Asia-Pacific,” he said.

At the same time, Shell will continue to grow its LNG business in India, while also expanding its retail operations in the country. “I think India with its economy and population will be key in the growth of energy demand in the future… For Shell, India is a very important country. We are quite clearly focused on bringing gas into India,” he said.

Shell, in partnership with France’s Total, operates the 3.6-million tonnes per annum LNG terminal at Hazira, which consists of a storage and re-gasification terminal along with port facilities. “We are very pleased with the Hazira terminal that we have, which is our main entry into India and that capacity is used a lot,” he said, adding that the company would push for long-term LNG contracts.

The oil and gas major, which acquired a marketing licence in 2004 to set-up 2,000 fuel retail stations, also expects its retail arms to grow.

“As far as I know, we are still the only IOC (international oil company) with a marketing license and, therefore, we are growing our consumer business in India. The pace of that (growth) will depend on how fast we can acquire land, plots, etc. but also on how the overall energy policy of the Indian government will work. I think I have seen very positive signs in that direction,” he said.

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Mon Oct 31, 2011 6:07am GMT

Oct 31 (Reuters) – Oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) expects prices of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Asia to continue rising and refining margins to stay under pressure in 2012, its chief executive said on Monday.

“LNG prices are rising and we see this continuing,” Peter Voser told Reuters on the sidelines of the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW).

Shell is working on new supply sources and that could influence prices in the longer term. The oil major has bought a marine terminal on Canada’s Pacific Coast as a possible site to export LNG to Asia.

Voser also said that new refining capacity coming online next year would cap margins.

“Refining is a cyclical business and there is significant capacity coming onstream,” he added. “It also depends on demand. I would say refining margins will be under pressure next year.”

Voser said he was optimistic that the global economy would continue to grow and did not expect a hard landing for China‘s economy.

“I am confident that the economy of China will grow in line with the aspirations of the Chinese people,” he added.

(Reporting by Francis Kan and Jessica Jaganathan; Writing by Miral Fahmy; Editing by Michael Urquhart)

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By Eduard Gismatullin – Oct 27, 2011 8:25 AM GMT+0100

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s biggest oil company, said third-quarter profit doubled as energy prices rose and it ramped up projects from Qatar to Canada.

Net income increased to $7 billion from $3.5 billion a year earlier, The Hague-based Shell said today in a statement. Excluding one-time items and inventory changes, earnings beat analyst estimates.

Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser is seeking to boost output with a $100 billion investment plan through 2014, including the Pearl gas-to-liquids and Qatargas 4 liquefied natural-gas projects and an upgrade at an oil-sands project in Alberta. Shell has sold about $6.2 billion of assets this year, exceeding a $5 billion target.

“We are making good progress against our targets, to deliver a more competitive performance,” Voser said in the statement.

Adjusted earnings of $7 billion compared with the $6.6 billion mean estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Shell’s Class A shares in London rose as much as 2.6 percent and were at 2,305 pence as of 8:08 a.m. local time. The stock is up 7.7 percent this year.

Earlier this week, BP Plc also reported profit that beat analyst estimates and increased an asset sales target by 50 percent to $45 billion. Statoil ASA, Norway’s biggest energy producer, said today that output rose for the first quarter in five as earnings fell on higher taxes. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. oil company, will report results later today.

LNG Sales

LNG sales volumes increased 12 percent to 4.76 million tons from the year-earlier quarter, Shell said.

Overall production fell 2 percent to 3.012 million barrels of oil equivalent a day. New fields contributed about 270,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

Shell’s cash flow benefited from a 33 percent gain in U.K. gas futures and a 46 percent increase in Brent oil prices from the year-earlier quarter.

Shell received its first contribution from a $12 billion biofuels joint venture with Cosan SA Industria & Comercio in Brazil, it said today. It was involved in two exploration discoveries in French Guiana and Australia. Shell also secured new exploration projects in the Americas, Tanzania and New Zealand.

Of the 31 analysts that cover Shell, 24 recommend buying the shares and seven have ‘hold’ ratings.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

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(Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) reported a doubling in profits on Thursday thanks to higher oil prices, robust demand for gas and stronger refining margins, and said it would continue to sell off non-core assets.

Europe’s largest oil company by market value said it’s current cost of supply (CCS) net income was $7.2 billion, a 100 percent rise on the same period last year when non-cash accounting charges weighed on the result.

The underlying result was broadly in line with analysts forecasts.

The Hague-based group said its enormous investments in big new projects were paying off saying that while production fell 2 percent to 3.01 million barrels of oil equivalent (boepd), excluding the sale of fields, the underlying trend was upward.

Chief Executive Peter Voser also said in a statement that although Shell had already met its target of $5 billion of disposals this year, sales of “non-core” assets would continue.

Brent crude jumped 48 percent in the quarter compared to the same period last year, to average $113/barrel in the quarter.

The Japan earthquake earlier this year and subsequent shut down of nuclear plants has boosted demand for natural gas, especially liquefied natural gas, in which Shell is a market leader.

The company said LNG sales rose 12 percent, echoing buoyant LNG results reported by smaller rival BG Group on Tuesday.

Excluding one-offs, the result rose 42 percent to $7.0 billion, compared to an average forecast of $6.61 billion from a Reuters poll of nine analysts.

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly-traded oil company third-quarter net income is expected to jump 40 percent on last year to $10.26 billion, according to I/B/E/S estimates.

CCS earnings strip out unrealized gains or losses related to changes in the value of inventories, and as such are comparable with net income under U.S. accounting rules.

(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

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