Shell Share Discussion Threads

[waldron] 06/8/2016 07:32

2nd quarter 2016
Announcement date July 28, 2016
Ex-dividend date RDS A ADSs and RDS B ADSs August 10, 2016
Ex-dividend date RDS A and RDS B shares August 11, 2016
Record date August 12, 2016
Scrip reference share price announcement date August 18, 2016
Closing of scrip election and currency election (See Note) August 26, 2016
Pounds sterling and euro equivalents announcement date September 5, 2016
Payment date September 19, 2016

Note

A different scrip election date may apply to registered and non-registered ADS holders.

Registered ADS holders can contact The Bank of New York Mellon for the election deadline that applies. Non-registered ADS holders can contact their broker, financial intermediary, bank or financial institution for the election deadline that applies.

Both a different scrip and currency election date may apply to shareholders holding shares in a securities account with a bank or financial institution ultimately holding through Euroclear Nederland. This may also apply to other shareholders who do not hold their shares either directly on the Register of Members or in the corporate sponsored nominee arrangement. Shareholders can contact their broker, financial intermediary, bank or financial institution for the election deadline that applies.

The 2016 interim dividend timetable is also available on www.shell.com/dividend

[la forge] 04/8/2016 08:58

Iran's Cabinet Approves New Oil-Field Contracts to Woo Western Investors
03/08/2016 1:40pm
Dow Jones News

Total Eur2.5 (EU:FP)
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Today : Thursday 4 August 2016
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Iran's government on Wednesday approved new oil-field contracts designed to attract Western oil investors following the lifting of sanctions in January, an oil-ministry spokeswoman said.

However, Iranian officials didn't disclose the terms of the new contracts, which have long been awaited by international oil companies that once worked there such as Total SA of France, Eni SpA of Italy and the Anglo-Dutch firm Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

The spokeswoman also said the terms of the new deals would still have to be approved by a parliamentary committee in charge of reconciling new legislation with old, and signed off by the assembly's speaker Ali Larijani.

The contracts have been at the center of a struggle between President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate in Iran, and conservative hard-liners opposed to foreign influence. Iran had been working to revamp the terms, even before Western sanctions over its nuclear program were lifted in January.

Mr. Rouhani's oil ministry proposed new contracts that would allow foreign oil companies to at least recoup their costs and last up to 20 years. The new deals were supposed to address concerns with the pre-sanctions contracts, called "buybacks," which included a fixed lump sum and, typically, a five-year deal.

After pressure from hard-liners in recent weeks, Iranian officials have said that the contracts for working in some parts of the country would continue to resemble the buyback deals of the past.

Mr. Rouhani's cabinet approved an amended version of the contracts on Wednesday, the oil ministry spokeswoman said.

Big oil companies have been hot and cold about returning to Iran, expressing excitement about the country's oil riches but skepticism over the terms of working there.

Iran has ramped up its production by over 800,000 barrels a day since December, but the country needs to attract $130 billion in its oil and gas fields to meet its goal of raising its oil production capacity to 5.7 million barrels a day by the end of 2020.

Write to Benoit Faucon at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 03, 2016 08:25 ET (12:25 GMT)

[waldron] 03/8/2016 06:58

CHUCKLE

WHILST I MIGHT AGREE WITH YOU BD


WHY AND WHEN

CHEERS

[ball deap] 02/8/2016 21:26

Reach for the door, open the door, bail out of door. Please form a orderly line at the exit.

[la forge] 28/7/2016 10:36

Julia Kollewe

Thursday 28 July 2016 10.09 BST
Last modified on Thursday 28 July 2016 10.19 BST

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Royal Dutch Shell has reported a 71% plunge in quarterly profits in the wake of the global slump in oil prices.

The Anglo-Dutch energy giant said net profit fell to $1.18bn (£890m) in the second quarter, from $3.99bn a year earlier. Shell’s shares dropped nearly 4% in London on the news.

Ben van Beurden, the chief executive, said: “Lower oil prices continue to be a significant challenge across the business.”

Shell has been cutting costs and selling assets, and said it was “firmly on track” to deliver $40bn in savings by the end of the year.

Other energy companies, including BP, have also been slashing tens of thousands of jobs and scaling back investment to cope with the oil slump. Brent crude hit a 12-year low of $27.10 a barrel in January, and on Thursday was trading around $43.50. Two years ago, it was at $115 a barrel.

Earlier this week, BP posted a 44% drop in second-quarter profits to $720m. It assumes oil prices will range from $50 to $55 a barrel next year.

Shell has taken over rival BG Group to strengthen its position in the liquefied natural gas market. The £47bn cash and shares deal, completed in February, has increased the size of Europe’s largest oil and gas group, to rival ExxonMobil in the US.

[grupo] 26/7/2016 09:43

yep all looks toppy

or oil looks toppy

or all oil looks toppy

or oil oil looks toppy

[ball deap] 26/7/2016 08:51

Reach for the door, open the door, bail out of door.

You have been warned.

[waldron] 15/7/2016 19:39

Oil prices bounced around this week, falling back on renewed concerns over a supply glut, but at times regaining ground. The IEA struck a negative tone regarding elevated inventories of both crude oil and refined products, and the high levels of storage will likely prevent a strong price rally in the third quarter. However, at the same time, the IEA said the market is moving closer to balance, and the Paris-based energy agency even issued a seemingly contradicting warning over the sharp cutbacks in upstream investment, which it says will leave the world short on supply in several years’ time. WTI and Brent closed out the week slightly up.

But the near-term outlook has turned bearish. The rush of refinery runs around the world has created an “epic overhang” of gasoline stockpiles, as Amirta Sen, the top oil analyst at Energy Aspects, described it. And the return of production from Canada, Nigeria, and potentially from Libya could restore some disrupted supply. There has been a lot of uncertainty surrounding the political situation in Europe following the Brexit, but for oil traders, the focus is shifting back to the crude oil market. “When the macro dust settles, which might take a while, it will become apparent that oil fundamentals are weaker than many realized,” Julius Walker, senior consultant at JBC Energy in Vienna, told Bloomberg. The EIA reported another decent though not enormous decline in oil inventories, but a surprising uptick in gasoline stocks spread pessimism around the market.

China adds to refined fuel glut. China stepped up its refining activity to a record high in June, and since domestic demand continues to come in lower than analysts anticipated for China, some of that product is being dumped onto the international market. Refinery runs hit 11 million barrels per day last month, or 3.2 percent higher from a year earlier. The high levels of processing are pushing down refining margins and leading to a flood of refined products being diverted into storage. That is putting strong downward pressure on crude oil prices.

But China’s oil production is falling. China is always viewed as a massive oil importer and consumer, but it is also a sizable producer. Low oil prices are forcing cutbacks at some of China’s high-cost oil fields. China’s production fell 4.6 percent in the first half of the year. PetroChina said that production will decline this year for the first time in 17 years.

Drilling old wells could add to U.S. supply. A new report from IHS Markit concludes that U.S. shale drillers could return to old vertically-drilled wells and drill them horizontally for new production. Because these wells have already been drilled once, the costs of drilling them horizontally for the first time would be substantially lower than drilling a fresh well. The report did not put an estimate on how much additional production could result from these old wells, but IHS said there is a lot of potential in vertical wells for drillers.

Shale more competitive than deepwater. Earlier this week consulting firm Wood Mackenzie released a report that concluded that U.S. shale is now more competitive than deepwater drilling projects around the world after two years of cost declines. Shale drillers have reduced costs by as much as 40 percent since 2014 while conventional drilling projects only cut costs by about 10 to 12 percent. As a result, moving forward, the industry will likely step up investment in shale projects, which are now more economical than large-scale deepwater plays. The Eagle Ford has breakeven costs of about $48 per barrel, parts of the Permian Basin have breakevens at $39 per barrel, while deepwater often needs oil prices as high as $60 per barrel.

Cnooc could abandon oil sands. Chinese state-owned oil company Cnooc purchased Nexen Energy in Canada in 2013 for $15 billion, but because of a series of mishaps at its Long Lake oil sands processing facility in Alberta, Cnooc might abandon the project. “The deal has turned out to be a bit of a dud for them,” said Gordon Houlden, a China expert at the University of Alberta, told The Wall Street Journal. At the time, the purchase of Nexen was China’s largest overseas acquisition on record, a large bet on Canadian oil sands. Since then, they have suffered several disasters – a pipeline spill last summer and an explosion at the same Long Lake facility in January, which killed two workers. The company is weighing whether or not to spend $100 million on repairs or shutter the facility instead. Long Lake turns heavier crude into lighter crude, and shutting it down would not only be a blow to Cnooc, but it would also negatively impact other oil sands producers who depend on the processing.

BP Deepwater Horizon bill rises to $61.6 billion. BP (NYSE: BP) added another $5.2 billion to its final tally for the 2010 oil spill, bringing the total to $61.6 billion. The British oil giant hopes the latest costs will be the last charge related to the disaster that will have a “material impact” on its finances.

ExxonMobil declares force majeure on Nigerian oil. The Niger Delta Avengers recently claimed a successful attack against the Qua Iboe crude pipeline, something that ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), the pipeline’s operator, denied. But Exxon declared force majeure on shipments of the crude export grade after a “system anomaly observed during a routine check of its loading facility.” Oil prices rose on the news. Expectations of a return of Nigerian oil production have ebbed and flowed with the news cycle – optimistic statements from Nigerian government officials talk up a return of crude production, but those sentiments are quickly dashed when the Niger Delta Avengers pull off fresh attacks. For now it is unclear how much production will come back in the short-term.

North Sea set to be hit with workers strike. Oil workers in the North Sea that provide maintenance services to Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) voted to strike over pay and working conditions. The FT calls it the largest industrial dispute in the British oilfields in a decade. The strike is another blow for a region that is struggling with declining competitiveness.

In our Numbers Report, we take a look at some of the most important metrics and indicators in the world of energy from the past week. Find out more by clicking here.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week.

Best Regards,

Evan Kelly
Editor, Oilprice.com

[ariane] 13/7/2016 16:42

Oil Industry Faces Huge Worker Shortage
Commodities / Crude Oil Jul 13, 2016 - 11:53 AM GMT

By: OilPrice_Com

Commodities

The rig count has rebounded from the lows seen in late May, a small indication that oil companies in the U.S. could begin drilling anew. Shale drilling is a short-cycle prospect, requiring only a few weeks to drill and bring a well online. Because of this, the collective U.S. shale industry has been likened to the new "swing producer": low oil prices force quick cutbacks but higher prices trigger new supplies. In essence, shale could balance the market in the way OPEC used to.

While that notion was always a bit simplistic, one reason that U.S. shale production won't necessarily spring into action in short order is because the people and equipment that were sidelined over the past two years can't come back at a moment's notice.

Oilfield service companies have gutted their payrolls and warm or cold stacked rigs and equipment (temporarily or more permanently idling rigs). An estimated 350,000 workers have been laid off in the oil industry around the world, and the rig count in the U.S. is a tiny fraction of what it was two years ago.

Bringing back all of that equipment and personnel is no easy task. The Wall Street Journal, using data from IHS, estimates that roughly 70 percent of the fracking equipment across the shale industry has been idled. Also, about 60 percent of the field workers that are needed to frack shale wells have been handed pink slips. It is not as if those workers are sitting around waiting for the call to go back to work; many have moved on to other industries and won't come back.

"It's scary to think what a drag and what a headwind finding experienced labor is going to be this time around," Roe Patterson, CEO of Basic Energy Services, a Texas-based well completion company, told the WSJ. He also said that equipment suffers wear and tear over time even when not in use. "Pop the hood on your car and let it sit for a year. I guarantee the car won't be in the same condition."

Drillers could try to woo workers with higher salaries, and will probably be forced to. And after more than 70 companies that offer services to oil producers have gone bankrupt over the past year and a half, fewer are around to meet industry needs. A tighter supply of services will drive up rates.

And that cuts at the heart of what some analysts have been saying for a while about breakeven costs - if companies have to raise salaries to staff up and pay more for rigs and services, their costs rise. In other words, the cost "reductions" and "efficiency gains" that so many oil companies have boasted about over the past two years may have been temporary and even somewhat illusory. Costs could rise as drilling resumes - both wages and rig rates could see upward pressure as activity picks up.

Aside from laid off workers moving out of oil and into other sectors, Bloomberg notes that there is a separate demographic problem related to the last oil price downturn. When oil prices crashed in the 1980s, the same thing that his happening today occurred in the industry then: companies went out of business and workers were laid off. And because there were few job openings, very few young people between the mid-1980s and 2000 went into oil and gas. As a result, much of the workforce that stuck around is now aging and moving closer to retirement, setting up the industry for a labor crunch, or the "Great Crew Change," as some dub it. There are too few experienced professionals to replace retiring workers.

The American Petroleum Institute said in a report earlier this year that oil, gas, and petrochemical companies will need to hire roughly 30,000 new workers each year over the next two decades to replace retiring employees, with about half of those positions classified as skilled or semi-skilled blue collar positions.

The industry has been worried about this longer-term labor problem for years, but it could be the shorter-term issue of a scarcity of workers because of recent layoffs and idled equipment that delays a restart of drilling.

The expectation that shale drilling will resume once oil prices rise above breakeven prices for drillers has led to analysts to believe that oil production will begin to increase as soon as this year. But if drillers can't start drilling right away, even if they want to, because of labor and equipment bottlenecks, then the declines in production that the U.S. has posted for more than a year will surely continue for a little while longer.

Link to original article: hxxp://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Industry-Faces-Huge-Worker-Shortage.html

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

[maywillow] 12/7/2016 19:34

Nigeria outages. Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) said that its Trans Niger pipeline was halted in Nigeria because of a leak. The pipeline has a capacity of 180,000 barrels per day. The company is investigating the cause of the leak.

Shell delays Canada LNG decision again. Shell pushed off for a second time a final investment decision on a massive LNG export facility on Canada’s Pacific Coast. The $40 billion project is not necessarily cancelled, but a decision on whether or not to move forward will be pushed off indefinitely. The global LNG market is depressed amid excess supply and tepid demand. Prices have crashed, upending the profit projections for new LNG export projects.

[the grumpy old men] 11/7/2016 21:08

Citigroup is “especially bullish” on commodities in 2017, the bank says.

“The oil market is treading water for now, but the oil price overshot to the downside earlier this year and this is clearly setting the stage for a bullish end to the decade,” Citi analysts, led by Ed Morse, wrote in a research note published on July 11.

There is a quite a bit of volatility in commodity markets, especially for oil, but global demand continues to grow at a steady pace. Prices have crashed on oversupply, but with oil production going offline, particularly in the U.S., the markets could over-correct, creating the conditions for higher prices next year.

More recently, the Brexit vote raised concerns about global growth and financial stability, but it will be forgotten as demand continues to soak up excess supply. To be sure, investors are wary of getting burned again after oil prices briefly rallied to $60 per barrel a year ago, which was followed by a renewed price crash.

But Citi says this time is different. “Unlike last year, when commodity markets rallied through the second quarter only to fall sharply come the third as oversupply persisted, this rally looks more sustainable as physical markets have tightened considerably,” Citi analysts wrote. “Global demand continues to grow at a moderate rate while the pullback in capital spending is reducing not just supply growth but total supplies across nearly all extractive industries.”
Related: U.S. Oil Rig Count Higher, Sees Biggest 2-Week Rise In A Year

Oil prices will likely rise in the coming months, with a more sustained rally set for next year. “Prices are expected to resume their ascension in 2017 as the market rebalances further and this should be bolstered by deepening cuts in non-OPEC oil production,” Citibank said. “[T]he pendulum is clearly swinging from the bears to the bulls.”

Indeed, the U.S. continues to see production drop off. The latest data from the EIA shows that output fell by 194,000 barrels per day for the week ending on July 1. Weekly estimates are not always the most accurate, but the decline is surprisingly large. If true, U.S. oil production is down 1.2 million barrels per day from the April 2015 peak, with more declines expected.

By Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com

[sarkasm] 10/7/2016 20:13

Inside Shell’s PR Strategy To Position Itself As A ‘Net-Zero Emissions’ Leader

By Mike Gaworecki • Sunday, July 10, 2016 - 04:58
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A leaked marketing strategy document prepared by oil behemoth Shell and revealed by EnergyDesk shows that Shell hopes to build brand loyalty, especially amongst young people, by repositioning itself as a leader in building a carbon neutral economy — even while the company plans to do nothing to actually rein in emissions from its operations or its product.

The document was intended as a briefing for public relations firms applying to handle an “Energy Transitions” marketing campaign centered around a net-zero emissions narrative for Shell.

According to the document, “Ultimately, the content shouldn’t focus on the challenges of today, but the solutions of tomorrow — showing that net-zero is possible but a ‘patchwork of solutions’ are required across different sectors;

Buildings & Lifestyle
Tranport
Power
Industry”

There is no specific mention of how fossil fuel industry business models will have to evolve to achieve a carbon neutral future, though the document states “It can be driven by carbon pricing” and repeatedly emphasizes carbon capture and sequestration as a key technology for transforming transport, power and industry.

In fact, the whole PR campaign appears to be designed to de-emphasize the enormous role reducing the use of fossil fuels must play in solving the climate crisis: “Reinforce the notion that it’s going to require a holistic (i.e [sic] economic, societal, political, technical) transformation — if society only focuses on energy we’ll miss the mark.”

While that statement isn't incorrect, per se, there’s a good reason why Shell is trying to deflect attention away from its own business model. In a report Shell released earlier this year entitled A Better Life with a Healthy Planet: Pathways to Net-Zero Emissions, which heavily informs the marketing strategy laid out in the leaked document, the company admits that,

“While we seek to enhance our operations’ average energy intensity through both the development of new projects and divestments, we have no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio over our investment horizon of 10–20 years.” [emphasis added]

In other words, the company has come up with a PR strategy to “Build Shell’s reputation as an innovative, competitive and forward-thinking energy company of the future” even while it has no plans to actually achieve carbon neutrality itself — despite the fact that net-zero emissions is the centerpiece of the vision for the future Shell wants people to believe it’s helping to create.

1984, anyone?

The most important audience for the communications strategy, according to the document, is “Members of the general public who are interested in energy and the environment — including younger, Energy Engaged Millennials (EEMs) — who might be key customers, partners and policymakers of today, as well as in the future.”

In elaborating upon who exactly EEMs are, the document states, “They are more open-minded (in general and with respect to Shell) than older generations so engaging with them appropriately at this point to develop brand loyalty [sic]. Their social connectivity suggests they can potential [sic] influence others and have direct and significant impact on Shell’s business.”

Though the marketing campaign is meant to be global, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and the US are the primary target markets. Secondary target markets include Germany, India, Oman, the Philippines, Singapore and South Africa.

Shell also hopes to influence what it calls “Shell special publics,” which include “thought-leaders within business/government who have a good understanding of the industry,” as well as academics, policy-based organizations and government officials in energy and climate departments “in key countries.”

But ultimately, of course, Shell’s primary interest is always its bottom line, as the company expects the PR push to “Help ‘open doors’ in building relationships with key stakeholders in support of business objectives,” per the document.

“Shell’s whole PR strategy is sleight of hand performed by an incumbent oil giant that really doesn’t want you to pay attention to its ongoing and significant contribution to climate change,” Greenpeace’s Georgie Johnson wrote on Energydesk. “Or to the hundreds of oil spills a year it’s responsible for in the Niger Delta. Or to its recent attempts to abandon oil and gas platforms as large as the Empire State Building in the North Sea. Or its sustained lobbying efforts against electric cars. For example.

“It especially doesn’t want you to think that the way to tackle climate change is something as commercially catastrophic for Shell as leaving the oil in the ground.”

[maywillow] 08/7/2016 20:24

Shell is seeking up to $2 billion from Saudi Aramco as part of the breakup of their U.S. joint refining venture, Motiva Enterprises. According to the split arrangement, Aramco will take control of Motiva's largest U.S. refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, and retain 26 distribution terminals, while Shell will become the sole owner of Motiva's Louisiana refineries in Convent and Norco as well as Shell-branded gasoline stations in Florida, Louisiana and the northeastern US. The split was announced in March and is expected to be completed in October but disagreements over the payment could postpone the final date. The $2 billion Shell is asking for would be compensation for the Saudi company retaining a larger share of the joint venture. The two companies joined together to create Motiva Enterprises LLC in 1998, a 50-50 joint venture that operated three refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But Shell and Saudi Aramco have seen their interests head in different directions. The relationship started to fray after Motiva announced a $10 billion expansion of the Port Arthur refinery, doubling its capacity to 603,000 barrels per day, making it America’s largest refinery. It produced gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Tensions have been high over this project for some time. A leak shortly after the expansion was completed in 2012 led to high costs, and a workers’ strike last year soured relations further. The split could also pave the way for the much-discussed potential of listing Aramco assets in a public offering.