News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Plc
Shell airlifts workers after coronavirus outbreak on Gulf rig
Workers aboard a Shell Oil offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico have tested positive for the coronavirus and flown back to land for treatment, a KHOU report says.
Shell Oil, the U.S. subsidiary of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell, has evacuated nine workers from a company platform in the Gulf of Mexico for testing and treatment of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
(Bloomberg) — Negative oil prices, ships dawdling at sea with unwanted cargoes, and traders getting creative about where to stash oil. The next chapter in the oil crisis is now inevitable: great swathes of the petroleum industry are about to start shutting down.
The economic impact of the coronavirus has ripped through the oil industry in dramatic phases. First it destroyed demand as lockdowns shut factories and kept drivers at home. Then storage started filling up and traders resorted to ocean-going tankers to store crude in the hope of better prices ahead.
As oil prices collapse, Shell is postponing the final investment decisions (FIDs) for two planned projects, one in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and another in the UK North Sea, a source with the supermajor told Reuters on Wednesday.
Shell is now thinking of postponing the FID for the development of the Whale discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Reuters’ source said. The initial FID timeframe was to make the decision later in 2020, but it is now postponed to 2021.
Shell announced the large deepwater discovery in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in January 2018, although it had made it six months earlier. Back then, the company said that the Whale discovery was “one of its largest U.S. Gulf of Mexico exploration finds in the past decade.” Shell is the operator of the planned project with a 60-percent interest, while U.S. supermajor Chevron holds the other 40 percent.
12 February 2020
Bernard Looney’s big challenge will be to navigate BP through an energy transition with the world falling out of love with oil, and louder demands from investors to pivot toward clean energy. When climate protesters forced the company to shut its London headquarters last week, the 49-year-old Irishman promised them he would address their concerns.
BP is already taking some modest steps to address climate change, including investment in renewables and selling some of its most carbon-intensive assets. But it remains an oil major through and through, still very much the company that tapped the first fields in Iran early in the last century and drilled wildcat wells on the Alaskan frontier more than 60 years ago.
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH:
: 26 JANUARY 2020 • 5:00AM From page 9 of the Money Section
The world is currently on fire, according to the teenage climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, the green activist demanded world leaders and money managers halt investment in fossil fuels and immediately, and completely, divest from “carbon assets” to avert a climate apocalypse and save the planet.
But can savers truly afford to put their money into exclusively ethical investments?
(Bloomberg) — Liquefied natural gas prices are poised to test record lows this year thanks to an onslaught of supply and warmer temperatures, throwing up risks and opportunities for the producers, buyers and traders behind the world’s fastest-growing fossil fuel.
The startup of new export projects from Australia to the U.S. has flooded the market, while brimming stockpiles in Europe and an expected slowdown in Chinese demand have dumped cold water on consumption prospects. LNG for spot delivery to North Asia is on track to hit an all-time low this summer, while gas prices in Europe and the U.S. are trading at the weakest seasonal levels since 1999.
The largest oil and gas companies for years have lived beyond their means and paid more money to investors than they can reasonably afford, according to a new report.
The study from the Cleveland-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that the five largest Big Oil majors — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Total — spent $536 billion on shareholder dividends and stock buybacks since 2010 while bringing in just $329 billion in free cash flow.
Jessica Resnick-Ault, Laura Sanicola: January 9, 2020
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) is looking to sell its oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington, according to three people familiar with the matter.
If completed, this and other asset sales currently underway would reduce Shell’s North American refining operations to large plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity as the talks are private.
Oil and gas major Shell has publicly committed to selling more than $5 billion (3.8 billion pounds) of assets per year in 2019 and 2020. The Netherlands-based company is trying to use its global scale to build a power business as the world moves toward cleaner energy.
Royal Dutch Shell confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to move about 50 New Orleans-based jobs to Houston next year, but said it is committed to keeping its core deepwater operations in the city long-term.
The company, which is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, said that the jobs being relocated to Shell’s North American headquarters in Texas are primarily from the subsurface and seismic processing teams.
A spokesman for Shell in New Orleans, Paul Hagel, said that the job-shuffle is a routine adjustment for the company and should not be seen as affecting the company’s long-term commitment to the city as headquarters of its deepwater operations for the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, Malaysia and elsewhere.
NEWS PROVIDED BY Shell: Nov 14, 2019, 16:11 ET
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — New, deep-water production has come online from the Brazilian pre-salt Santos Basin. Shell Brasil Petróleo Ltda. (Shell Brasil) and its consortium partners today announced the start of oil and natural gas production at the P-68 floating production, storage, and offloading unit (FPSO), located in BM-S-11A Concession in Berbigão, Sururu and West Atapu.
The FPSO can process up to 150,000 barrels of oil and 6 million cubic meters of natural gas daily. Operated by Petrobras, P-68 features ten producing wells and seven injection wells.
By HARRY WISE FOR THISISMONEY.CO.UK and PA
Oil giant Shell has experienced a large fall in third-quarter profits due to weaker oil prices.
Earnings after stripping out fluctuating expenses fell 15 per cent to £3.7billion, well below estimates it might reach almost £5billion.
Shell was able to charge an average of £43.25 per barrel of oil it produced in the quarter, down from £52.69 in the same three months last year. It was even more than a dollar lower than the second quarter price.
By Reuters• last updated: 01/07/2019 – 16:04
(Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> confirmed two fatalities as a result of an incident at its Auger Tension Leg Platform in the deep-water U.S. Gulf of Mexico on Sunday morning.
“One other non-life-threatening injury was sustained, and that individual is being treated at a nearby hospital,” Shell said in an emailed response on Monday.
The accident occurred around 9:00 a.m. CST during a routine and mandatory test of a lifeboat launch and retrieval capabilities at the platform, located 214 miles south of New Orleans.
In brief
Printed below is an English translation of an article published today by the Dutch Financial Times, Financieele Dagblad.
Beeld: Getty Images/ bewerking: FD Studio
In December 2017, during regular maintenance work, a lifeboat suddenly came loose on the Shell platform Brent Alpha in the North Sea. The lifeboat fell into the sea and was recovered a day later. Although no one is injured, it was not the first time. In 2008, it was discovered that two lifeboats on another nearby Shell platform, Brent Bravo, were technically in such poor condition that they had to be replaced. And in 2007 a rescue boat on another Shell platform broke loose and collapsed into the sea.
Ben van Beurden Photographer: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg
The boss of oil giant Shell has admitted he is “still unhappy” with the firm’s safety performance, despite pledging a redoubling of efforts in 2018.
The Gulf Coast has become home of one the largest producers of a common plastic: Shell fired up its fourth alpha olefins unit at its chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana, the company said Monday.
The multi-billion dollar expansion adds 425,000 metric tons per a year in capacity to the chemical manufacturing site, bringing its total alpha olefin production up at Geismar to more than 1.3 million metric tons per a year. That makes it the largest alpha olefins producing site in the world, the company said.
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: Geert Vermeulen (Ethics & Compliance Officer) posted an article on Linkedin about the Shell OPL 45 debacle and all that surrounds it. This was a response to the article by Adam Bennett: Geert, very easy to pass judgments without knowing full facts and in hindsight. Having previously led the business integrity department at Shell I can tell you things in Nigeria are never that clear cut. One thing I remain certain of is the moral compass of shells leadership. Can’t be the same moral compass most of us are certain of.
: Shell restructuring. See: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/may/27/shell-restructuring-redundancies No better place to start than in Shell's Brazil Asset starting with the BG 'Job for Life' sycophants who have been associated with this asset for more than ten years. Start at the top with the Front End Development and Integrated Reservoir Modelling Manager and work down to the Technical Team Leads comprising sniggering Simons. Invite them all to a meeting entitled 'Wrap-up', make them an 'Offer Without Prejudice' and then constructively dismiss them by discussing their poor performance! A disgraceful asset, corrupt to the core!
: About Dear Rob, he is hardly departing in a blaze of glory, his mission it seems is very much unaccomplished as he departs the scene. Who will take over the poisoned chalice and get the show on the road? In what seems a relatively short time Prelude has gone from being the expected Real Madrid of the engineering project world to a sort of Accrington Stanley, maybe being a bit unfair on the latter. Guess the worst of times was the export of human excrement in paper bags from the installation when the lights went out and nothing on it worked ........
: "And 8% to 12% currently we don’t even make in our upstream business" BvB... That performance includes the huge over runs on Corrib, Penn Chem, Prelude, multiple other LNG projects, Alaska Fiasco, and many other (not to mention OPL 245). It is such an embarrassing comparison to ExxonMobil in projects like Liza, which is highly likely to exceed returns Shell is chasing as a utility. Brasil (or Mexico) have the capacity to deliver similar returns to Liza, if there was leadership and strategy for a long term development. What makes BvB so sure that Shell's management and culture can exceed the returns of the existing players in the "new energies" this time? Maybe the job cuts should start at the top... and not the middle where there is some remaining talent left...
: A recent comment posted here reminded me of an email I received some years ago. It is printed in italics below with one sentence deleted.
If you want some more dirt on Shell Oil, you need to go to the Inspector General’s Office, Defense Security Services, US Dept. of Defense. In 2006 DSS initiated a counter-intelligence operation and Shell USA was implicated as the primary ‘culprit’. The FBI had declined to take the case because they could not get an investigation through the US Attorney Generals office (Alberto Gonzalez) without fear of reprisal. The Houston office of DCIS (the law enforcement arm of the DoD IG’s office) had also tried to initiate an investigation but it was outside their purview.
Do not contact me for further information. I will not respond. The above (alleged) conduct by Shell constitutes a capital crime under US law and there are no statutes of limitations regarding this conduct, for the company or the Shell officials involved. Because of the highly classified nature of the material Shell attempted (unsuccessfully) to gain access to the matter could well trigger a 'diplomatic' incident, and Shell plays 'rough'.
Shell has friends within the US government to whom it turns for intelligence information. I have Shell internal emails confirming this.
: For Mr.Bogus Group: I am a Shell pensioner and I can say we all know that the company is not what it used to be. Its future is not bright and the problem is bad management. When I left the company years ago I chatted with some VP's and they all said the company was not what it used to be and wasn't fun to work for any longer. They also said they would be doing what I was doing if they were 20 years younger. I leave Shell to its inevitable fate.
: USA USA USA, in response to your points. Why was the assurance process broken? – because incompetent managers and executives didn’t understand that implementing an effective work process was more than a Power Point presentation. Why did bullies just tick the box? – because nobody had the courage to challenge them, lest it impeded their prospects to further their own aims. Why did they ignore anyone asking difficult questions? – because imperious managers and executives regarded those who challenged as nonconformists, who threatened their craving for dominance.
: Penn Chem is pure folly. Wasn't the business case tax incentives, using waste products from fracking, being close to customers, good neighbor cleaning up toxic waste, never mind the cost or the risks. But now the only reason to finish is for the tax advantages, and then sell it while the PE price remains low, in the hope that someone thinks they are getting a deal. Demonstration that the first mover risks can outweigh the opportunity... kind of like prelude, or being a power utility, or us wind 15 years ago ... the assurance process is completely broken - bullies just tick the box, while ignoring anyone who asks difficult questions. Maybe we can get another TRUMP visit, and more chants of "USA USA USA"?
: More news of BG diaspora. At the Annual General Meeting of Hurricane Energy plc held on 3rd of June, Ms Beverley Smith was elected as a Director of the Company with 99.85% of the votes in favour, 0.15% votes against. Having previous experience as a VP and overseeing a hasty retreat from Algeria at the now defunct BG Group, will doubtless be valuable when exploring rock bottom and/or fractured basement on the Atlantic Margin!
: Would this be the same managers and geologists that made the competent business development and exploration decision to develop the Knarr Field? A venture that failed to meet its potential, both in terms of daily production and field life. In fact, I recall the UK based BG Group General Manager for Europe was a geologist.
: Useless degree????. 'Also it is not possible to be a competent geologist in the oil and gas business without having a very good background education in both sedimentation and stratigraphy. Both topics go hand in hand. Furthermore, managers at both the middle level and senior level need to be well versed in this subject area in order to make competent business development and exploration decisions.' These would be the same 'job for life', middle to senior level managers and competent geologists who at BG Group, for example, assured work at a cost of £200MM which later cost the company £2Bn because it was wrong (according to the Chief Operating Officer at the time), and also spent more than five years working in an asset following corrupt workflows? From your post on this Blog, I see that your time at a 'reputable university' was well spent in learning how to be exuberant with punctuation. That is all I have to say on the topic. Cheers!
: I was reading your blog today and saw a reference to 'sedimentology' being a 'useless degree'. I do not believe any reputable university offers such a degree. Sedimentology is a sub-discipline within the field of geology. Reputable universities do offer degrees in geology. It is possible to specialize in sedimentology I suppose, but you need to be enrolled in a geology program to do so. I know, I am a geologist, among other things.
Also it is not possible to be a competent geologist in the oil and gas business without having a very good background education in both sedimentation and stratigraphy. Both topics go hand in hand.
That is all I have to say on the topic. Cheers.
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