Royal Dutch Shell Plc  .com Rotating Header Image

Reports: Shell to exit Africa nations

A Shell Petrol Station along Nyerere Avenue, Mombasa. Photo/ ABDULRAHMAN SHERIFF

Daily Nation

By JEVANS NYABIAGE
Posted Tuesday, January 5 2010 at 19:00

Realignments are in the offing following reports that oil dealer Shell is planning to quit 20 African countries.

Local dealers who have a business relationship with the firm, confirmed to the Nation that Shell intends to sell its refinery, storage and retail businesses from nations where it still operates.

Ms Victoria Kaigai, Shell communications manager East Africa, confirmed that the firm is reviewing its global downstream business.

“Like any competitive business, Shell actively manages its global portfolio and is always seeking opportunities to improve profitability. We continuously review our global downstream portfolio in line with our more upstream, profitable approach to capital allocation,” said Ms Kaigai.

The firm recently disposed of businesses in Greece and expects to sell refineries in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Ms Kaigai denied reports that Shell is in talks with any third parties to sell downstream business in Africa.

Partial withdrawal

On January 4, the French State-funded public broadcaster Radio France Internationale reported that Shell is expected to make a partial withdrawal from the African continent this year.

In 2008, Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company moved away from 15 African countries, although it holds on to its most lucrative activities; exploration and production.

Oilibya and Morocco Oil are said to be eying the firm’s North Africa assets while in southern Africa, Engen Petroleum Ltd is said to be interested. If Shell goes ahead to pull out of Kenya, Total will remain the single largest global brand in the local retail petroleum business.

Shell had positioned itself in the market with earlier acquisitions of Agip and BP, but seems to be reeling from growing competition from local and Asian firms.

Over the recent years other global petroleum brands such as Esso, Agip, Mobil, BP, Caltex (Chevron) have vanished leaving only two global brands – Shell and Total – which combined control about 45 per cent of the Kenyan market.

Mobil was bought by OilLibya, owned by the Government of Libya through Tamoil while Caltex was recently taken over by Total.

The report comes as Shell officials have been insisting their BP investment are long term.

On December 20, Reuters had reported that Shell was selling oil fields in Nigeria valued at up to $5 billion.

SOURCE ARTICLE

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Comment Rules

  • Please show respect to the opinions of others no matter how seemingly far-fetched.
  • Abusive, foul language, and/or divisive comments may be deleted without notice.
  • Each blog member is allowed limited comments, as displayed above the comment box.
  • Comments must be limited to the number of words displayed above the comment box.
  • Please limit one comment after any comment posted per post.