REUTERS

DUBAI March 10 (Reuters) – Oil major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) has stopped gasoline sales to Iran, oil traders said on Wednesday, the latest addition to a growing list of firms that have halted supplies under threat of future U.S. sanctions.

Shell declined to comment.

(Reporting by Luke Pachymuthu; editing by Keiron Henderson)

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Sun Mar 7, 2010 9:48am GMT

BAGHDAD, March 7 (Reuters) – Iraq has extended a memorandum of understanding with Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on a natural gas venture around the southern oil hub of Basra for six months from March 2010, Iraq’s Oil Minister told Reuters on Sunday.

“We will resume talks with Shell after the election,” the minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, said after he cast his vote in the country’s second full parliamentary election since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. “The Shell contract is in its final form after Shell accepted our remarks and demands.”

Iraq has been working to finalize the venture between its South Gas Company, Shell and Mitsubishi (8058.T). The deal would capture huge amounts of gas currently wasted by being flared at oilfields and use it for the domestic market or exports.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Rania El Gamal)

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By Poornima Gupta

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 4 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) expects electricity-powered vehicles to account for as much as 40 percent of the worldwide car market by 2050, Chief Executive Peter Voser said on Thursday.

Voser, speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, said technological improvements and increases in the cost of producing gasoline will give a boost to vehicles that run on alternative power.

“We think between now and 2050, we will go from 1 billion cars to 2 billion cars worldwide,” he said. “We think by 2050, roughly 40 percent of those 2 billion cars will be electric.”

In the next 40 years, the market needs low-carbon fuels, more efficient engines and hybrid vehicles, Voser said.

“I think there will be room and space to develop all of them,” he added.

Gasoline demand in developed countries like the United States has started to decline, partly as vehicles running on alternative fuels have entered the market. Companies such as Shell and BP (BP.L) are spending more money on those newer technologies, including for next-generation biofuels.

Automakers such as Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T) are racing to launch electric cars, betting these will be the environmentally friendly transportation of the future. Small players like Tesla Motors already sell electric vehicles.

Voser said Shell was investing 25 percent of its research and development budget into renewables, including wind power and biofuels.

Shell has bet big on ethanol by striking a deal with Brazil’s Cosan (CSAN3.SA) to create a $21 billion a year ethanol joint venture.

The 50-50 joint venture, with almost 4,500 filling stations nationwide, will better position Cosan and Shell to compete with the two top players in the market, state oil giant Petrobras (PETR4.SA) and Ipiranga, a unit of Brazil’s Grupo Ultra (UGPA4.SA).

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

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FRANKFURT, March 1 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) Chief Executive Peter Voser defended the oil giant’s retreat from some green technologies to concentrate on oil and gas production in an interview with the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Shell withdrew from its solar business because it was not prepared to make the required investments, Voser told the newspaper adding that alternative fuel for cars remained problematic.

Voser said Shell was investing between 20 percent and 25 percent of its research budget into biofuels, an area where the company still sees potential.

But Voser cautioned that second generation biofuels will take years before they become viable arriving on markets, “late this decade…if at all.”

Biofuels, hybrid technology and electric cars still faced difficult technological hurdles, and may even cause other problems, the Swiss chief executive said.

“In the next 40 years, the number of vehicles in the world will double,” he said.

Demand, he said, will come mainly from Asia, where many polluting coal fired power stations generate electricity, there could be a step backward from an environmental standpoint.

Voser said he does not expect massive growth for oil demand in the short-term. “Because 2010 is a difficult year for the world economy, particularly the second half, when stimulus measures come to an end,” he said.

“We will probably also continue at a slow pace in to 2011. But in the medium term, global demand for oil and gas will rise.”

(Reporting by Edward Taylor, Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved.

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REUTERS

LONDON, March 1 (Reuters) – Oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) is selling a number of assets, including its European liquid petroleum gas businesses, to fund a 28 billion pound capital spending programme, the FT reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.

The Anglo-Dutch giant has said it is looking to divest 15 percent of its global refining capacity as the European oil industry battles a drop in demand for oil products and 15 year-low margins.

The FT said the oil company planned to raise $2-3 billion dollars by auctioning off assets that did not contribute to its growth plans, including refining and marketing operations in Europe and mature oil and gas field in the North Sea and Nigeria.

A spokesman for Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, declined to comment.

The paper said Swiss-bank Credit Suisse was advising on the deal and that a number of private equity firms, including Axa Private Equity, Bain Capital and PAI, were interested in acquiring the group’s European liquid petroleum gas businesses.

The oil major already agreed to sell its stake in three onshore oil licences in Nigeria at the end of January. [nLDE60S29D]

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) made more than a one billion dollar loss in downstream business in the fourth quarter.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Diane Craft)

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BAGHDAD, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Talks between Iraq and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on a natural gas deal near the southern oil hub of Basra are taking longer than expected but still ongoing, a senior Iraqi oil official said on Friday.

“The heads of agreement will be extended and the project will be presented to the next government,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi government has been working to finalize the joint venture between its South Gas Company, Shell and Mitsubishi (8058.T). The deal would capture huge amounts of gas for domestic use or export, which is currently wasted by being flared at the oil fields.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Sue Thomas)

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved.

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ABUJA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s proposed oil industry reforms could drive away $50 billion in investment if passed in their current form and make a bad situation for the sector even worse, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) said on Tuesday.

Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:55am GMT

ABUJA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Angola’s offshore oil production is likely to be double that of Nigeria by 2020, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) said on Tuesday.

The two countries rival each other as Africa’s biggest oil producer, but oil majors say Nigeria risks losing out if changes to its terms make it less profitable to develop deep water reserves.

“By 2020, Angola’s offshore production is likely to be double that of Nigeria,” Shell’s Executive Vice President for sub-Saharan Africa, Ann Pickard, told an industry conference in Abuja.

(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ )

(Reporting by Joe Brock and Nick Tattersall)

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LONDON (Reuters) – Consolidation is needed in the global oil refining sector, the chief economist of BP Plc said on Monday, indicating more tough decisions ahead for an industry beset by poor margins.

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc posted a 75 percent fall in fourth-quarter profits to $1.18 billion, as the oil major was punished for falling output and its strong position in the depressed refining and natural gas businesses.

Oil prices recovered in the quarter but gas prices were much lower than in the same period a year earlier, while refining margins collapsed to their lowest level in almost 15 years.

Europe’s second largest oil company by market value said it made a $1.76 billion loss in its refining unit and Chief Executive Peter Voser said he was mulling the sale or closure of 15 percent of Shell’s refining portfolio, even after saying it planned to close its Montreal facility last month. “These results confirmed the very negative trends affecting the downstream business,” Colin Smith, oil analyst at ICAP, said.

Excluding one-off items, which amounted to a charge of $1.6 billion, the result was $2.77 billion, short of an average forecast of $2.87 billion from a Reuters poll of 10 analysts.

Oil and gas production fell 2.4 percent to 3.3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the quarter compared to the same period last year. Full year output was down 3 percent.

Shell’s results compare with a 23 percent drop in fourth-quarter net income at the largest western oil company by market value, Exxon Mobil, and a 37 percent drop at the second-largest U.S. oil company, Chevron.

However, UK rival BP managed to report a 33 percent rise in profits in the quarter thanks to its low reliance on refining and natural gas.

Finnish refiner Neste Oil lagged consensus with Q4 sales of 2.5 billion euros compared with 2.66 billion in a Reuters poll while Europe’s largest independent refiner Petroplus beat forecasts but swung to a clean net loss of $150 million in the fourth quarter.

(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Victoria Bryan, Mike Nesbit)

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