Posts Tagged ‘Australia’

by Angela Macdonald-Smith: Nov 29, 2017

Royal Dutch Shell has sewn doubt in the market about an early 2018 start-up of the oil major’s innovative Prelude floating LNG project off the coast of north-west Australia, with chief executive Ben van Beurden signalling that the project will only start contributing noticeably to cash flow in 2019.

While the ramp-up of the $US54 billion (71 billion) Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia was named by Mr van Beurden as among projects named to help grow cash flows next year, Prelude was included in the later batch. read more

With Royal Dutch Shell’s Prelude floating LNG project in Western Australia and Ichthys, a massive project led by Japan’s Inpex in the north of Australia, about to be completed, Australia’s export capacity could hit 85 million tonnes next year, topping that of current leader Qatar. read more

With Royal Dutch Shell’s Prelude floating LNG project in Western Australia and Ichthys, a massive project led by Japan’s Inpex in the north of Australia, about to be completed, Australia’s export capacity could hit 85 million tonnes next year, topping that of current leader Qatar. read more

Callum Turcan: Nov 15, 2017

Summary

• Royal Dutch Shell generates free cash flow in Q3.
• Outlook for Q4, even in light of impending capex increase, looks bright due to Brent rallying.
• Over $10 billion in net debt reduction since the end of Q3 2016.
• Overview of Q3 results and what to expect going forward.

Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) has come a long way since it bottomed out in early-2016. Its latest earnings reportreinforced the notion that when Brent is trading in the $50s, Shell’s cash flow position becomes balanced. Cash flow neutrality is the key breakeven point for the industry in the current environment, as oil & gas giants need to show that they can cover capital expenditures and large dividends through organic means at realistic prices. Let’s check out how Royal Dutch Shell did in a low $50s Brent world, with an eye on organic cash inflows and outflows. FULL ARTICLE WITH CHARTS read more

Shares falls as much as 3.5% in early Australia trading

Allan Gray Australia says it boosts stake in the LNG producer

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. fell the most in a year after Europe’s biggest oil company, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, said it would offloaded its entire holding in the Australian liquefied natural gas producer for $2.7 billion. Woodside shares fell as much as 3.5 percent in intraday trading on Tuesday to A$31.10 ($23.74), and changed hands at A$31.19 at 11:51 a.m. in Sydney. Shell said it would sell an 8.5 percent stake in Woodside at A$31.10 a share, a 3.5 percent discount to Woodside’s closing price on Monday. The Anglo-Dutch company then expanded that sale overnight to exit its remaining 4.8 percent holding. FULL ARTICLE read more

Reuters Staff: NOVEMBER 13, 2017

LONDON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is selling part of its stake in Australia’s largest independent oil and gas company, Woodside Petroleum Ltd, to equity investors for about $1.7 billion.

Shell, which has been slowly divesting its Woodside holding, said on Monday its Shell Energy Holdings Australia Limited (SEHAL) unit had struck a deal with two investment banks over the sale of 71.6 million Woodside shares for A$31.10 ($23.79) apiece.

The oil major said that represented 64 percent of its interest in Woodside and 8.5 percent of the issued capital in Woodside. FULL ARTICLE read more

Royal Dutch Shell plc revealed Monday that it will sell part of its stake in Woodside Petroleum Limited to equity investors for around $1.7 billion.

The company’s subsidiary, Shell Energy Holdings Australia Limited (SEHAL), has entered into an underwriting agreement with two investment banks for the sale of 71.6 million shares in Woodside, representing 64 percent of its interest in the company and 8.5 percent of the issued capital, at a price of A$31.10 per share, resulting in total pre-tax proceeds of approximately $1.7 billion (A$2.2 billion). read more

06 November 2017

The Shell Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant/ship of Royal Dutch Shell, which will be located in the Timor Sea off the North West coast of Australia, has been named as the FieldComm Group 2017 Plant of the Year.

Royal Dutch Shell has taken Exxon Mobil’s cashflow crown, a year after completing the biggest deal in its history.

Europe’s largest energy company vaulted ahead on this closely watched indicator of financial health in the first nine months of 2017 as assets acquired from BG Group from Brazil to Australia churned out cash. For the year as a whole, Shell is on course to surpass its larger US rival on the measure for the first time in about two decades.

Shell generated $28.38 billion (€24.34bn) of cashflow from operations in the first nine months of the year, compared with $23.52 billion (€20.18bn) from Exxon. Chief executive Ben Van Beurden has already spelled out that his main long-term goal was overtaking Exxon to become the best-performing oil major. read more

Dutch supermajor trying to dump $30 billion in assets in order to shape the company “into a world class investment.”

Nov. 1 (UPI) — Royal Dutch Shell said Wednesday it made further progress in a major divestment plan by completing the sale of assets in Gabon and in the North Sea. For $628 million, Shell said it completed the sale of its entire Gabonese oil and gas interests to a company controlled by The Carlyle Group. The transaction includes the sale of all of Shell’s onshore oil and gas interests, which includes nine total fields, and the associated infrastructure, including pipelines and export terminals. read more

Sunday 15 October 2017

Senior Royal Dutch Shell executives have been charged in Italy for their role in a vast bribery scheme that deprived the Nigerian people of over a billion dollars, the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed on Friday. Those facing trial include Malcolm Brinded CBE, the second most powerful person in the company when the deal was struck (1). Shell itself is also facing bribery charges alongside the four named individuals.

Malcolm Brinded Charged

This historic decision follows a dramatic U-turn in which it admitted that it knew its billion dollar payment would go to convicted money-launderer and former Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, in exchange for Nigerian oil block OPL 245 in 2011. read more

STEPHEN BARTHOLOMEUSZ: Business columnist, Melbourne: 10 Oct 2017

Shell Australia’s new chair, Zoe Yujnovich, has injected what for some will be an uncomfortable dose of reality into what has been a generally misleading debate about the role that the three big Queensland export LNG plants have played in the east coast energy crisis.

In an address to the national energy summit yesterday, Ms Yujnovich took issue with the widely accepted narrative that exports from the three plants off Gladstone have created a shortage of gas on the east coast and driven a spectacular surge in gas prices for households and manufacturers. read more

MELBOURNE, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Chevron Corp said on Monday it has started producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) at its Wheatstone project in Australia, slightly later than expected, and plans to ship its first cargo soon. The LNG market will be focused on how smoothly Wheatstone progresses following the troubled start-up at Chevron’s bigger Gorgon LNG project. Both projects are fed from natural gas fields offshore the state of Western Australia. “The first cargo is on track to be shipped in the coming weeks,” Chevron Corp said in a statement. It had originally hoped to start exporting from Wheatstone in middle of 2017. Wheatstone is the sixth out of eight projects in a $200 billion Australian LNG construction boom that is now in its final stretch. The two remaining ones are Royal Dutch Shell’s Prelude floating LNG project and Ichthys, led by Japan’s Inpex. FULL ARTICLE read more

* Australia LNG exports tipped to rise to 74 mt in 2018-19

* Australia’s share of Japan, Korea LNG imports seen growing

* Iron ore price forecast raised to $64 for 2017

SYDNEY, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Australia expects to increase exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 16 percent from mid-2018 as $180 billion in new projects hit their stride, nearly catching up with Qatar, the world’s top supplier.

Rising LNG exports coupled with higher prices for steel-making commodities and thermal coal should see Australia’s overall resource and energy export earnings increase 2 percent in the year to end-June 2018, to a record A$211 billion ($165 billion), the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science said on Friday. read more

Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) is getting closer and closer to finally completing its Prelude FLNG project off the northwestern coast of Australia. FLNG stands for floating liquefied natural gas, a marine vessel that can commercialize gas finds that are too small to justify building a new onshore LNG facility to develop. Let’s dig in. FULL ARTICLE

Europe’s biggest energy company is investing in projects to boost global gas demand and aims to continue feeding the market it’s nurturing with new liquefied natural gas export plants.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc is supporting the development of gas use in heavy transport such as shipping and is also helping smaller and less credit worthy customers begin importing LNG, Maarten Wetselaar, the company’s director of integrated gas and new energies, said at an event at Bloomberg’s Sydney office Wednesday. As new LNG customers enter the market, that will open a window for Shell and others to develop new low-cost export plants. “I want to create shorts that we can build projects against,” Wetselaar said. “As we develop the market, we’ll need new supply. We will build new LNG projects to serve that market, but as for where, I would be wrong to tell you.” FULL ARTICLE read more