Shell warned the market on Monday that it would book up to $4.5 billion more in post-tax charges in the fourth quarter, which would take the supermajor’s combined write-downs to over $22 billion in the year in which Big Oil significantly cut the value of their oil and gas assets.
Shell expects post-tax charges of between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion in relation to impairments, asset restructuring, and onerous contracts in the fourth quarter, the company said in its Q4 2020 update note today. The charges will include partial impairment of the Appomattox asset in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico due to subsurface updates, charges in the oil products division, including such related to the announced transformation of the refinery portfolio, as well as charges from onerous contracts in the Integrated Gas division.read more
Shell says its oil and gas production business should report a third straight quarterly loss while Q4 results from its trading operations – a bright spot earlier in the pandemic amid volatile oil prices – would come in “significantly lower” than in Q3.
The S&P energy sector (XLE-3.8%) is today’s worst market performer, and Big Oil names are getting trounced but have moved off day’s lows: XOM-2.9%, CVX-1.9%, BP-5.7%.
“The indicative guidance looks disappointing, particularly in the context of the strong run Shell has had in recent weeks,” RBC analyst Biraj Borkhataria says.
Cowen analysts maintain their Buy rating and $41 price target for Shell shares, as the reduced cash flow outlook is offset by today’s announced divestment, and as such the analysts retain their outlook that debt will hit target levels around year-end 2021 to enable buybacks in 2022.
Shell says the anticipated $3.5B-$4.5B writedown includes an impairment of its Appomattox deepwater oil and gas project in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as charges related to its refining operations and onerous gas contracts.
LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday raised its dividend after easily beating quarterly profit forecasts and outlined plans to shrink its oil and gas operations as it presses forward with a transition to low-carbon energy.
The Anglo-Dutch company hit record earnings from its vast retail division, despite the impact on demand of the COVID-19 pandemic, which it said continued to generate “significant uncertainty”.read more
…the Anglo-Dutch group has been forced into previously unthinkable moves, change and scrutiny of its capital allocation plans mount, is scrambling to come up with an updated plan. In the meantime, it is cutting costs and streamlining.
On Wednesday it offered a glimpse into Project Reshape, its organisational restructuring in which up to 9,000 jobs will be cut from its 83,000-strong workforce to save $2.5bn a year.read more
LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell is looking to slash up to 40% off the cost of producing oil and gas in a major drive to save cash so it can overhaul its business and focus more on renewable energy and power markets, sources told Reuters.
Shell’s new cost-cutting review, known internally as Project Reshape and expected to be completed this year, will affect its three main divisions and any savings will come on top of a $4 billion 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
The world’s biggest ship is on the way to becoming one of the oil industry’s biggest bloopers.
Prelude, a 600,000-ton monster which is five-times the size of the largest U.S. aircraft carrier, is designed to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG), and other petroleum liquids.
Installed atop a remote gasfield 300 miles off the north-west Australian coast, the 535-yard long Prelude is a bold experiment by the oil major, Royal Dutch Shell.read more
“Over the coming months we will go through a comprehensive review of the company. Where appropriate we will redesign our organization to adapt to a different future…”
Reuters: Ron Bousso and Shariq Khan: June 23, 2020 9:45 AM EDT
LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell will announce a major restructuring by the end of the year as the energy company prepares to accelerate its shift towards low-carbon, CEO Ben van Beurden told employees according to a company source.
In a video interview published on Shell’s internal website, van Beurden said that the restructuring would involve job cuts as part of broad cost reductions, although no figures have been decided yet, according to sources who saw the interview.read more
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.
by L M Sixel and Sergio Chapa, Houston Chronicle: 28/05/2020
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.read more
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.read more
As BP Plc’s new chief delivers his vision to transform the company on Wednesday, investors and activists want to know just how much appetite he has to take on the existential crisis facing the oil industry.
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.read more
“Investors are gradually moving away from energy stocks. A look behind the dividend payments of the leading companies helps explain why. For the core business of these companies, there is more money going out than coming in.”
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.read more
(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.read more
Last year the number of accidents per hour worked increased at the oil company. Supervisors warn that Shell needs to do more about safety.
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.read more
The firm also faced widespread shareholder opposition over chief executive pay last year.
Mr van Beurden said: “I feel an attack on Shell as an attack on my personal integrity. It’s something I feel deeply, probably at least once a day. If I can reduce that to once every other day, I’ll know that we are making progress.
“Of our three strategic ambitions – to become a world-class investment case, to thrive through the transition to lower-carbon energy and to have a strong societal licence to operate – I’m confident that we can achieve the first two.
“But I can’t see a sure path towards strengthening our societal licence to operate just yet.
“We need to change people’s perceptions through better performance and behaviours. And we need to have a better dialogue with civil society in some parts of the world.”
Marissa Luck, Houston Chronicle: Monday, Jan 7, 2019
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.read more
Listen and read proof in audio and transcript form of Shell CEO Ben van Beurden’s cover-up tactics in the OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal. The instruction given by him in the covertly recorded call to CFO Simon Henry was at odds with Shell’s claimed core business principles. Cover-up and obstruction, instead of transparency and integrity, says Shell critic John Donovan
SHELL EXECUTIVES AT THE CENTER OF A SCHEME TO STEAL $1.3 BILLION FROM NIGERIA’S PEOPLE
SHELL ADMITS DEALING WITH NIGERIAN MONEY LAUNDERER – BBC NEWS
SHELL, ENI AND NIGERIAN OFFICIALS IN OPL 245 CORRUPTION SCANDAL
INVESTIGATION OF OPL 245 NIGERIAN OIL CORRUPTION SCANDAL
SHELL KILLS FOR OIL IN NIGERIA
ESTHER KIOBEL SUES SHELL FOR COMPLICITY IN HUSBANDS MURDER
ESTHER KIOBEL: EVIL OIL GIANT SHELL COLLUDED IN THE EXECUTION OF MY INNOCENT HUSBAND
SHELL LIED ABOUT CLEANING UP OIL IN NIGER DELTA
SHELL SPIES INFILTRATED NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT
DUTCH EARTHQUAKES CAUSED BY SHELL/EXXON
LEGO DROPS SHELL OVER GREENPEACE OIL SPILL VIDEO
SHELL ARCTIC DRILLING ACCIDENTS
SHELL KNEW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE DECADES AGO
JOHN DONOVAN TV DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW
ABANDONED BY SHELL: KEITH MACDONALD & FAMILY, VICTIMS OF RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION AT WORK
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL FOUNDER SIR HENRI DETERDING, NAZI FINANCIER
JOHN DONOVAN PROMOTIONAL GAMES FOR SHELL AND OTHER CLIENTS
AN OPEN WOUND FOR SHELL SAYS FT
John Donovan’s ebooks
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON. EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
Zik Gbemre: ON HOW TO REVAMP NIGERIA’S UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM OIL & GAS SECTOR
With recent reports that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved a whopping $1.5 billion to rehabilitate the epileptic Port Harcourt refinery, I consider it a national tragedy and a shame of a nation that Nigeria, despite its over fifty decades of oil and gas exploration and production activities, has been exporting its hugely produced crude oil and natural gas at commercial quantity, and then import ‘refined petroleum products’ at higher costs to satisfy domestic demands. The said move, according to the government, is to ensure that the obsolete Port-Harcourt refinery, which last benefitted from a Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) work in 2000, comes back to life, while also supposedly contributing to the development of Nigeria’s oil sector.
We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our Causes
https://ndpc-zik.org/publications/on-who-to-revamp-nigeria-upstream-and-downstream-oil-and-gas-sector
COMPLETE COMMENTS
Bonus Group: I have mentioned before how the contaminated produced water from Shell's Western Delta Deep Marine gas fields, acquired during the takeover of BG Group, used to be tankered and dumped in the desert.Khaled Gad, Shell's Onshore and Offshore Asset Manager in Egypt, should be able to answer the question as to what now happens to the produced water from Shell's assets in Egypt.
Bonus Group: Further to Bogus Group's post, very little at BG Group was proven. The majority of their work was of low integrity and dissolved at the slightest scrutiny. This was to be expected with a 'do as I say, not do as I do' Line Management.
Bogus Group: https://trinidadexpress.com/business/local/shell-takes-biggest-hit/article_ca33aea4-73d5-11eb-8a6e-ff41b564d669.html
It's surely been proven that BG proven reserves were not actually proven and that Shell did inherit a 'pig in the poke'. The statement “Our preference is to deal with these arrangements, not in a clandestine way but there is a deeper confidentiality to it. We have these arrangements all over the world. We need to ensure that we maintain a degree of confidentiality but what I will confirm is that hundreds of millions of US dollars converts to billions of TT dollars and we have confirmed that Trinidad will benefit to billions,”beggars belief.
Bonus Group: It is not clear why the once upon a time VP Developments, Brazil is now VP Subsurface Excellence, given that the Brazil Asset under her stewardship spent at least five years down a giant rabbit hole using a corrupt workflow that resulted in a significant overbooking of reserves.
OVER 500 EXTERNAL PUBLICATIONS CITING OUR SHELL WEBSITES
See our link list of over 500 articles by the FT, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Forbes, Dow Jones Newswires, New York Times, CNBC etc, plus UK House of Commons Select Committee Hansard records, information on U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission websiteetc. all containing references to our Shell focussed websites, or our website founders Alfred and John Donovan. Includes TV documentary features in English and German, newspaper and magazine articles, radio interviews, newsletters etc. Plus academic papers, Stratfor intelligence reports and UK, U.S. and Australian state/parliamentary publications, also citing our Shell websites. Click on this link to see the entire list, all in date order with a link to an index of over 60 books also containing references to our websites and/or our activities.
John Donovan, the website owner A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
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