Apr. 5, 2020 2:47 PM ET|About: Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM)|By: Liz Kiesche, SA News Editor

Some of the world’s largest oil companies  have raised more than $32B in recent weeks to ensure they have the cash to deal with the economic effects of the coronavirus while preserving dividends, the Financial Times reports.

ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B), Equinor, Total, and BP (NYSE:BP) have sold debt to raise dollars or euros since mid-March.

They’re also paring capex, reducing costs, pausing stock buybacks, and delaying project approvals.

Besides the bond sales, Shell and BP have also obtained new multibillion-dollar credit facilities. read more

Shell, for example, said last month that it was diverting resources to the increased production of isopropyl alcohol, which is the primary ingredient in hand sanitizers. It also said it would make 2.5 million liters of the ingredient freely available to the healthcare sector in the Netherlands. The supermajor is also offering free food and drink to healthcare professionals at 15,000 retail outlets globally as well as to truck drivers and delivery personnel “who are vital to maintaining supplies.”

• Royal Dutch Shell is collaborating with Udacity to digitally train its workers in artificial intelligence.
• This began long before the coronavirus pandemic and the company continues to use this training method.
• The digital workforce skilling platform may become the training method of choice for a growing number of companies who need to keep employees up to speed in the weeks and months ahead.

Working at Royal Dutch Shell’s Deepwater division in New Orleans gives Barbara Waelde a front-row seat to how the right data can unlock crucial information for the oil giant. So when her supervisor asked her last year if she was interested in a program that could sharpen her digital and data science capabilities, Waelde, 55, jumped at the chance.

Since she began her online coursework, the seven-year Shell veteran has learned Python programming, supervised learning algorithms and data modeling, among other skills. read more

By Francois De Beaupuy: 2 April 2020, 09:24 BST

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Total SA and Equinor ASA are selling $12 billion of bonds as the combined effect of the slump in oil prices and the collapse in demand threaten to sap cash flows for months.

Big Oil, already under pressure from shareholders before the coronavirus crisis to improve returns, has moved swiftly to defer projects, cut spending and halt share buybacks. They are seeking to protect dividends as the economic slump and a price war led by Saudi Arabia undermines profits. read more

UPDATE 2-Shell pulls out of U.S. Lake Charles LNG project, Energy Transfer delays FID

* Energy Transfer delays FID from late 2020 to early 2021

* Shell relinquishes 50% stake amid spending cuts

* Decision comes after collapse in oil prices 

By Ron Bousso and Shradha Singh

March 30 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc pulled out of a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant under development in Louisiana following the recent crash in oil and natural gas prices that has forced the company to make deep spending cuts.

Energy Transfer LP, which was developing the project with Shell, said it remains focused on the commercial development of Lake Charles and is working toward making an early 2021 final investment decision (FID) to build the plant. read more

Energy companies slash another $19 billion as oil price remain near 20-year lows

Eleven energy companies over the past several days said they would cut a combined $18.6 billion dollars from their budgets as oil prices remain near 20-year lows, setting the stage for tens of thousands additional layoffs.

West Texas Intermediate crude closed at $23.36 per barrel Monday, a price not seen since March 2002 as Russia and Saudi Arabia flood global markets and the coronavirus pandemic crushes demand.

Energy companies big and small — including Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Oil, Hess and Halliburton — have responded by slashing spending for new projects and operations, halting stock buy back programs, putting deals on hold and selling assets. read more

PUBLISHED WED, MAR 25 20205:14 AM EDT

• The world’s biggest oil and gas firms should break an industry taboo and consider cutting dividends as they weather the fallout from the pandemic, investors say.
• Investors prefer the dividend cut to companies taking on any more debt to maintain payouts.
• The top five so-called oil majors have avoided reducing dividends for years to keep investors sweet and added a combined $25 billion to debt levels in 2019 to maintain capital spending, while giving back billions to shareholders.

The world’s biggest oil and gas firms should break an industry taboo and consider cutting dividends, rather than taking on any more debt to maintain payouts as they weather the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, investors say.

The top five so-called oil majors have avoided reducing dividends for years to keep investors sweet and added a combined $25 billion to debt levels in 2019 to maintain capital spending, while giving back billions to shareholders. read more

No Big Oil executive would ever accept that’s true — at least for now. Even as management teams confront both the catastrophic demand destruction wrought by the spread of coronavirus and an oil-price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, they’re determined to keep paying.

“Nobody wants to be the CEO who cuts the dividend,” said Noah Barrett, a Denver-based energy analyst at Janus Henderson Group Plc, which manages about $375 billion. “They understand that any company that cuts, its shareholders will flow into competitors and be very, very hesitant to ever come back.” read more

By Erwin Seba and Gary McWilliams

HOUSTON, March 15 (Reuters) – Major energy companies in the United States imposed work-from-home rules for office staff and began health checks for remote or critical workers as coronavirus spread across the United States and threatened an industry reeling by falling demand and profits.

BP, Exxon Mobil, Kinder Morgan, Motiva Enterprises and Royal Dutch Shell told non-essential staff to work from home starting Monday, workers and officials said. Shell and Chevron have begun routine health checks of workers and visitors at some key U.S. facilities, spokesmen said. read more

The collapse in crude prices has brought into relief the correlation between oil majors’ financial leverage and the valuation of their shares. It’s a relationship that looks like particularly bad news for the bigger European firms.

Investors’ knee-jerk reaction to the downward lurch in the oil price was, naturally, more severe toward the companies that were more indebted. So shares in BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Equinor ASA and Eni SpA suffered more than Total SA and the two big U.S. majors, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., when European markets closed on Monday. read more

By Ron Bousso and Shadia Nasralla: 09 March 2020

LONDON (Reuters) – An oil price plunge means the world’s top energy companies will have to review promises to return billions to investors, either by slowing down share buybacks or reintroducing non-cash dividends, analysts said on Monday.

Brent crude <LCOc1> was trading at around $36 a barrel, down around 20% by 1645 GMT on Monday, when analysts lowered share price forecasts for top oil and gas producers. [O/R]

The Brent benchmark has fallen by as much as a third since Thursday, just before Russia walked away from an agreement by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut output. read more

Extracts

…the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) …  represents 29 of Europe’s main fossil fuel operators, including Total, Shell, BP and ExxonMobil.

Such firms, their business founded on extracting fossil fuels, have an interest in delaying or undermining policies designed to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis.

FULL ARTICLE

EXTRACTS (Entire New York Magazine article can be read here)

Since 2017, when I published a book about American millennials, I’ve had the occasional cold call from corporations to come talk about my work, all but one of which I’ve turned down. But last fall, the Shell Scenarios team — as in Royal Dutch Shell, one of the biggest oil companies in the world — offered me £2,000 in exchange for a 15-minute talk and my participation in a group exercise. Its internal corporate think tank was holding a daylong conference about how generational change would affect the hopefulness projected in what the company calls the “Sky Scenario,” which it describes as “a technically possible but challenging pathway for society to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.” I’m not a climate expert, but apparently I qualify as a generational whisperer, at least to Shell, and to talk to me about global warming, the giant energy conglomerate wanted to fly me to London from Philadelphia, business class. I warned them that I couldn’t keep their money and asked if I’d need to sign an NDA. When they said no, I saw an opportunity to report on the oil company, undercover while in plain sight, without technically lying to anyone. It was too good to pass up. I said yes, then I emailed my editor. read more

By Nick Cunningham – Mar 01, 2020, 4:00 PM CST

ExxonMobil saw its share price nosedive by roughly 15 percent in the past week, one in a series of oil companies that finds itself in a freefall.

Four other oil majors – Chevron, BP, Shell and Total – also declined sharply, dragged down by the worst weekly loss for oil prices in more than four years.

But the problems for the oil majors run much deeper than the coronavirus, and their share price declines have been underway for quite some time. read more