Posts under ‘Oil Company Profits’

Shell prepares for major production cuts to refocus on green strategy

Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB.L) is looking to cut up to 40% off its costs related to producing oil and gas as it focuses on the renewable energy and power markets.

That’s according to a source who spoke exclusively to Reuters.

The project is known internally as Project Reshape and is expected to be completed by the end of this year, said Monday’s report. There will be three main divisions of the business that are impacted by the cuts and they will reportedly be in addition to a $4bn (£3.1bn) target set in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. read more

‘Stranded Assets’ Risk Rising With Climate Action and $40 Oil

By Laura Hurst | Bloomberg:

September 18, 2020 at 7:55 a.m. GMT+1

What had seemed like an abstract debate about leaving oil, gas and coal in the ground to fight climate change has suddenly become real. Environmental activists have long fought for lower fossil-fuel production. Now, with the pandemic crippling economies and reducing energy use and prices, drillers and miners are coming to grips with projects that are no longer viable. Some companies are even abandoning investments, leaving deposits worth billions of dollars in the ground to languish as so-called “stranded assets.” While environmentalists applaud, fund managers, banks and regulators worry that project financing could sour and collateral become worthless. read more

Big Oil just isn’t as big as it once was

ExxonMobil’s expulsion from the Dow Jones industrial average is just the latest sign that major oil companies aren’t as important to the economy as they used to be

A dozen years ago, ExxonMobil was the bluest of blue-chip companies. Raking in record-breaking profit, it spent every quarter of 2008 as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.

Not anymore. The oil giant’s market value today is a third of what it was in 2008, when it was worth over $500 billion. That slide culminated last month with Exxon ending its 92-year run on the Dow Jones industrial average. read more

Exxon Oz Starts Voluntary Redundancy Program…

Exxon weighs global job cuts after unveiling Australian lay-off plan

Back in May, Bloomberg reported that Royal Dutch Shell plc would use voluntary severance measures…

ExxonMobil Australia announced Wednesday that it has commenced a voluntary redundancy program.

The program follows an extensive review of the company’s current and future project work, according to ExxonMobil Australia, which highlighted that staff who take part in the program will be asked to offer expressions of interest through this month. read more

Ian Cowie: Oops, many of my share clangers have now turned into catastrophes

EXTRACTS

Because this column aims to report the rough as well as the smooth of stock market investment, it’s important to ‘fess up to my failures frequently. Also, let’s be honest, some of you enjoy my losers more than my winners.

Sad to say, the coronavirus crisis has blighted many businesses, and investors in them. Please don’t laugh, but several shares I dubbed “Cowie’s Clangers” in earlier reports — because their price fell by more than 10 per cent after I invested — could now be called “Cowie’s Catastrophes”. read more

When BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, said he would cut the oil giant’s dividend in half earlier this month, he might have expected a backlash from the pension funds that rely on the £1.6bn quarterly payout. In the event, it caused little more than a ripple of interest. Nor was much attention paid to BP’s record $17.7bn (£13.5bn) loss, incurred over just three months and which compared with a profit of $1.8bn in the same period a year earlier.

Instead, the headlines were dominated by one of the most dramatic strategy shifts ever announced by a FTSE 100 company. BP, Looney said, would become a “very different energy company” as it increased tenfold its investment in low-carbon energy, while reducing oil and gas output by a billion barrels a day. much of the legacy oil business will be sold in the next five years and replaced by renewable energy generation. read more

Big Oil Asset Write-Downs Are Not The End Of The Oil Age

Tilak Doshi: Contributor Energy: Aug 23, 2020

Climate change activists have long lobbied for divestment from fossil fuel-producing companies. They have largely failed in this quest. This year, the steep falls in the value of the large oil and gas companies, however, occurred with a rapidity that astonished market watchers. Within weeks, the coronavirus pandemic and the oil market-share battle between Saudi Arabia and Russia launched after the collapse of the OPEC+ talks in early March led to unprecedented falls in Big Oil equity. read more

Europe’s Big Oil Companies Aim To Become Big Energy

By Haley Zaremba – Aug 19, 2020, 12:00 PM CDT

Big Oil’s most profitable business is no longer oil. This attention-grabbing headline published by Oilprice.com earlier this month may be dramatic, but it’s not hyperbole – it’s the truth. “Even as oil demand and prices have recovered, the tried and true economic model is no longer a failsafe option for oil and gas companies,” reads the article. “Pumping crude just isn’t paying the bills.” read more

By Alex Kimani – Aug 17, 2020, 7:00 PM CDT

Booms and bust cycles are very much a part of investing in the fossil fuel sector. In previous energy downturns, prices frequently experienced serious slumps, but oil and gas companies mostly kept faith in their biggest asset: Oil and gas reserves buried deep in the ground. But things are markedly different this time around.

Faced with pandemic-driven demand destruction and a relentless call for climate-conscious and ethical investing, oil executives are resigning themselves to the uncomfortable fact that a significant amount of their vast oil and gas reserves will end up totally worthless. read more

With oil prices expected to stay low, big producers are grappling with lower profits and the prospect of a quicker transition to renewable energy

Ben Chapman @b_c_chapman: 18 August 2020

Seven of the world’s largest oil firms have wiped almost $90bn (£69bn) off the value of their fossil fuel reserves as the coronavirus pandemic sent demand plunging.

Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total, Chevron, Repsol, Eni and Equinor have written down their oil and gas assets by $87bn over the past nine months, with $55bn coming in the latest financial quarter, analysis by climate think tank Carbon Tracker found. read more

Oil Giants’ Production Cuts Come to 1 Million Bpd as They Post Massive Writedowns

By Reuters: Aug. 9, 2020, 1:18 a.m. ET

(Reuters) – The world’s five largest oil companies collectively cut the value of their assets by nearly $50 billion in the second quarter, and slashed production rates as the coronavirus pandemic caused a drastic fall in fuel prices and demand.

The dramatic reductions in asset valuations and decline in output show the depth of the pain in the second quarter. Fuel demand at one point was down by more than 30% worldwide, and still remains below pre-pandemic levels. read more

Exclusive: BP poised to sell ‘stranded assets’ even if oil prices rally

By Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov: AUGUST 7, 2020

…There will be no way back for the British energy company once it has offloaded its so-called stranded oil and gas assets.

LONDON (Reuters) – BP is preparing to sell a large chunk of its oil and gas assets even if crude prices bounce back from the COVID-19 crash because it wants to invest more in renewable energy, three sources familiar with BP’s thinking said. read more

Translation of an article published today by the Dutch FT, the FD Het Financieele Dagblad 2020)

Shell has to pay for its openness

Carel Grol

In Brief

• All oil companies are hit by the low oil price.
• Nevertheless, American companies perform better than European companies, with Shell as the largest descender.
• One explanation is that Shell makes more predictions, and is therefore punished more harshly. American companies say less, so they can count on less.

Shell is experiencing an annus horribilis. The oil and gas company’s share price has halved this year. The oil price has suffered from the massive drop in demand due to corona and disagreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia over the reduction of oil production. Shell wrote off billions and cut the dividend for the first time since World War II. But remarkably, the American oil majors are doing much better in the exact same market. read more

Breakingviews – Weakened Shell offers dim hope for pre-virus glory

Aimee Donnellan: JULY 30, 2020

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) – Oil majors may be past the worst of the coronavirus-induced crash, but the recovery is likely to be long and arduous. Royal Dutch Shell, Chief Executive Ben van Beurden on Thursday said the $122 billion company’s sales fell by nearly two-thirds in the second quarter, as crude prices collapsed during lockdowns. The pandemic will leave a legacy of rising debt, diminished investment and uncertain demand. Juicy investor payouts are the natural sacrifice. read more

The Anglo-Dutch company reported adjusted earnings of $638 million for the second quarter of 2020. That compared with net profit of $3.5 billion over the same period a year earlier and $2.9 billion in the first three months of 2020.

Analysts had warned that “Big Oil” companies, referring to the world’s largest energy majors, were likely to report “horrendous” second-quarter results as coronavirus lockdown measures coincided with an unparalleled demand shock.

The ongoing economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic had prompted Shell to announce that it expected to incur write-downs of up to $22 billion in the second quarter. read more

Royal Dutch Shell is expected to announce a record quarterly loss next week as the oil industry counts the cost of the toughest quarter in its history. read more