Shell Share Discussion Threads

[zcaprd7] 16/11/2015 10:53

Hmm. If the merger is off, this will fly?

[gutterhead] 11/8/2015 14:15

Welcome Mrthomas
You may well be right ref DC but I did check it from their financials?
Let's hope it's a fruitful venture for us. Good luck

[mrthomas] 11/8/2015 13:53

I brought in for the same reason as gutterhead plus the buying of BG which could really help not sure DC is 2.4 think more like 1.8

[zcaprd7] 04/8/2015 17:10

Big volume today...

[essentialinvestor] 03/8/2015 16:30

Why the A shares?.

[gutterhead] 03/8/2015 16:24

Bought some today.

30% off high and 6.5% dividend, 2.4 times cover etc is too irresistible for me.

[zcaprd7] 21/7/2015 16:49

Had a nibble

[zcaprd7] 29/6/2015 02:59

Not sure. Seems to be unravelling this week. Never underestimate the euro project architects though, but I think the greeks have saved the rest of Europe now... Short term buying opportunity...

[prambigear] 16/6/2015 17:52

#183 Far too much road left to kick the can down.

There will be some last minute deal to give it more time.

Personally, I wonder whether the governments of Germany and France aren't just trying to put things off until the next economic upturn (if there ever is one for the eurogroup!) so that growth will enable them to take a big haircut and leave a poorer Greece with manageable loan debt.

[zcaprd7] 16/6/2015 13:34

Think I'll wait until Greece sorts itself out... Not long now I suppose!

[waldron] 15/6/2015 09:35

1850

NOW UP FROM HERE

[zcaprd7] 13/6/2015 14:12

This keeps dropping, looking to get back in, but where is the next support?

[waldron] 30/4/2015 06:47

By Daniel Gilbert

The costs of finding oil are on the rise. The value of some smaller oil companies has tumbled. For the world's biggest crude producers, this adds up to a question: Is it cheaper to buy someone else's oil than to go digging for it?

As Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. report quarterly profits this week, executives are likely to face questions about their appetite for megadeals like the $70 billion takeover Royal Dutch Shell PLC announced earlier this month of BG Group PLC.

"There is no doubt that it's much, much less expensive to take over a company than develop a new oil project in order to replace reserves," says Leonardo Maugeri, a scholar at Harvard's Belfer Center and a former executive of Italian oil company Eni SpA. He expects the most likely takeover candidates would be oil companies with a stock-market value between $10 billion and $40 billion--relatively small compared with Exxon's $368 billion market capitalization.

The rising costs of finding and producing oil were eating into profits even before global crude prices began to slide last summer from over $100 a barrel to about $66 today. The price collapse has intensified a push by companies to cut costs and shed less-profitable operations.

BP PLC reported Tuesday that quarterly profit fell 40% from a year earlier, despite an increase in oil and gas output and a boost from its refining business. Analysts forecast profits for Exxon, Shell and Chevron will be at least 60% lower than a year ago.

Since 2010, Exxon has spent an average of $29 billion a year on finding and tapping oil and gas, adding an average of 1.5 billion barrels a year to its proved reserves--the inventory of fuels it can pump at a profit. That works out to about $19 a barrel.

But it could get almost the same amount of fuel for less money by buying a smaller rival now that energy companies' stock market values have fallen along with the price of crude.

For example, shale-oil driller Continental Resources Inc. has 1.35 billion barrels of proved reserves and a stock-market value of less than $20 billion, or less than $15 a barrel of proved reserves. The company, which is controlled by Chief Executive Harold Hamm, has lost about 22% of its stock-market value in the last 12 months. Continental declined to comment.

Some analysts think that some U.S.-focused midsize companies are likely to get even cheaper in coming months. Barclays analysts noted on Wednesday that the shares of some drillers appear to assume an oil price of $95 a barrel, far above today's $58 price tag for U.S. crude--and more than futures contracts for oil a year from now.

Exxon and peers point out that they have discovered a lot of oil and gas that they haven't yet booked as proved reserves, which they generally wait to do until committing the money to drill them. Exxon, for instance, says it has found the equivalent of 92 billion barrels of oil, of which a little more than a quarter is counted as reserves. It says it spent just $1.25 a barrel last year to find the oil and gas that it hasn't yet committed to pump.

Because oil and gas wells decline over time, energy companies are constantly trying to replace them. The cost of finding more fuel has shot up for the world's biggest energy companies, as they have pursued oil from beneath Kazakhstan's icy Caspian Sea, developed facilities to export natural gas from the remote reaches of Western Australia and mined gunky crude from Canada's oil sands.

Exxon declined to comment. But asked in March about potential acquisitions, Rex Tillerson, Exxon's chief executive, told analysts that the oil-price crash offered "a whole lot of different kinds of opportunities, not just in terms of accessing new resources through various means but also getting the cost structure back to where we believe it is more appropriate."

The biggest U.S. oil company wields tremendous takeover power with its ability to borrow cheaply and a hoard of shares that could be used in a merger.

For years, Exxon has saved money by reducing its global workforce, which is down by almost a third since its 1999 merger with Mobil Corp. Exxon now has fewer employees than 20 years ago and pumps 50% more oil and gas.

But getting bigger today might not create the savings energy companies are seeking, some analysts say. "They've got huge scale now," says Tom Ellacott, a senior analyst at the consultancy Wood Mackenzie. "It's proved quite difficult to grow with that sort of scale. I think another wave of megamergers is quite unlikely at the moment."

Instead, he says companies will make acquisitions to fill in gaps in their holdings or to building on existing strengths, as Shell proposes to do by swallowing BG.

Before the deal, Shell talked up its ability to discover oil and gas cheaply and played down the value of acquisitions. But then Shell paid a 50% premium for BG, enhancing its dominance as a global shipper of natural gas and acquiring potentially massive oil deposits off the coast of Brazil.

Justin Scheck contributed to this article.

Write to Daniel Gilbert at [e-mail]

[imperial3] 20/4/2015 11:13

The European QE programme could help these.

[grupo guitarlumber] 18/4/2015 18:06

1st quarter 2015
Announcement date April 30, 2015
Ex-dividend date RDS A ADSs and RDS B ADSs (Note 1)
May 13, 2015
Ex-dividend date RDS A and RDS B shares (Note 1) May 14, 2015
Record date May 15, 2015
Closing of currency election (Note 2) June 1, 2015
Pounds sterling and euro equivalents announcement date June 8, 2015
Payment date June 22, 2015

Note 1 - The London Stock Exchange and Euronext Amsterdam, with effect from October 6, 2014 reduced the standard settlement cycle in accordance with the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories (CSDs) and amending Directive 98/26/EC (the “CSD Regulation”). This CSD Regulation aims to harmonise EU securities settlement cycles towards a T + 2 cycle. As a result RDS A shares and RDS B shares traded on these markets will now settle one day quicker than the RDS A ADSs and RDS B ADSs traded in the United States. Record dates will not change. The timings of these are detailed above.

Note 2 - A different currency election date may apply to shareholders holding shares in a securities account with a bank or financial institution ultimately holding through Euroclear Nederland. Please contact your broker, financial intermediary, bank or financial institution where you hold your securities account for the election deadline that applies.

[waldron] 15/4/2015 16:37

By Kjetil Malkenes Hovland

OSLO--Norway's sovereign-wealth fund, the world's biggest, said Wednesday it would vote in favor of a proposal to require oil companies Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA.LN) and BP PLC (BP) to report annually on the risks associated with climate change, in the fund's first announcement of its voting intensions.

"As a long-term investor, we believe that the identification of future scenarios for climate regulation, carbon pricing, and environmental conditions is a useful tool to support strategic decision-making," said Petter Johnsen, Chief Investment Officer for Equity Strategies. "We thereby support these resolutions."

The $885 billion fund, managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, or NBIM, said last year that it planned to announce its voting intentions ahead of annual shareholder meetings for a selected number of companies and for certain fundamental issues, partly to boost transparency.

The resolutions submitted to BP and Shell's annual general meetings asked for further information on the risks and opportunities associated with climate change, NBIM said. The companies would be required to include the climate information in annual reporting as of 2016, it said.

The fund said it commended the boards of BP and Shell for recommending support for the resolutions. The fund held a 2.16% stake in BP and a 2.02% stake in Shell at the end of 2014.

The Norwegian fund has stepped up the transparency of its voting in recent years, and publishes its voting records online on a running basis, compared with once a year previously. The fund voted on 10,519 general meetings last year, supporting 85% of the board proposals.

NBIM has said it will be engaging more with companies and their boards in line with it taking more material stakes in more companies. The fund held more than 2% stakes in 1,205 companies and stakes exceeding 5% in 57 companies at the end of 2014, from 1,088 companies and 45 companies respectively a year earlier.

The fund has a 10% cap on its ownership stakes in any given company.

The fund manager recently updated its expectations to companies' climate change strategies. NBIM said it expected companies to consider how their business strategies relate to different scenarios, including a successful global deal to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

-Write to Kjetil Malkenes Hovland at [e-mail]

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[waldron] 09/4/2015 14:29

BP, Shell yet to meet Abu Dhabi's $2.2B sign-on fee for oil concession • 8:22 AM
Carl Surran, SA News Editor

BP and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) still have not met the UAE’s demand of a $2.2B sign-on fee to bid on one of the last big oil concessions in the Middle East, nearly two months after the emirate set a deadline.
BP and Shell remain contenders for a new 40-year contract, but are locked in a standoff over the terms; after Total (NYSE:TOT) agreed in January to a $2.2B sign-on fee for a 10% interest in a concession covering 15 onshore fields, Abu Dhabi demanded the same terms from BP and Shell.
While the UAE's sizable oil reserves are a tantalizing prize, TOT’s deal was not seen favorably within the oil industry, and companies are scrutinizing projects carefully amid weak oil prices; Exxon already has walked away from the concession after its 75-year license expired in January 2014.

[waldron] 03/4/2015 10:18

DOW JONES NEWS

By Eric Yep

The framework nuclear deal between Iran and six global powers on Thursday boosts the odds for the lifting of curbs on Tehran's oil exports, but it doesn't throw open the floodgates of Iranian crude supply just yet.

Any ramp up in Iranian oil exports depends on a final nuclear deal in June, a subsequent lifting of sanctions and the pace of recovery in Iran's investment-starved oil sector.

Oil prices fell after the framework deal was announced, with Brent crude losing 3.7% in the last trading session, but consulting firm Eurasia Group said the drop in the oil price will likely wash out when harsh debate over the agreement begins next week.

If a final nuclear agreement is reached by the end of June, it could take three months to lift or suspend oil and banking sanctions against Tehran and another six months to restore 1 million barrels a day of oil production and exports, according to French bank Société; Générale.

"Iranian crude will not become a major issue for the oil markets until 2016," the bank said.

Once sanctions are lifted, initial Iranian crude sales could begin trickling in from its stockpiles. Iran has put large volumes of crude into storage as it produced more than it could export or consume domestically.

The bulk of Iran's oil is exported from the islands of Kharg, Lavan and Sirri in the Persian Gulf, with a combined storage capacity of around 38 million barrels of oil, according to the U.S. energy department. In addition to these terminals, Iran also uses its supertankers for oil storage, because tight western sanctions on shipping and insurance made it difficult for state-run National Iranian Tanker Co. to operate tankers in global waters.

"Iran-owned tankers have nothing better to do anyway, given that they are themselves strangled by U.S. sanctions," said Ralph Leszczynski, research director at Italian ship broker Banchero Costa. He said may of these are being used to store crude instead.

Since the beginning of February, an estimated 15 very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, have been anchored off the Iranian coast for oil storage, equal to around 35 million tons of oil, according to London-based E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd.

China, India, South Korea, Japan and Turkey are the largest buyers of Iranian crude, with the bulk going to Asia. Iranian oil sales will have to be at discounted rates to compete in the current oversupplied market and will flow heavily to buyers in Asia, Singapore-based traders said.

India in particular is expected to ramp up its Iranian oil imports, as the government had instructed refiners to cut purchases in the first quarter of this year to meet annual targets. Its refiners will resume Iranian purchases in April, when India's new fiscal year begins, consulting firm Energy Aspects said.

Iran's oil and condensate exports had dropped from 2.5 million barrels a day in 2011 to 1.1 million barrels a day in 2013 because of sanctions. Exports recovered marginally to around 1.27 million barrels a day in 2014 after an interim deal was signed. Energy Aspects estimates discharging floating storage alone could increase Iranian oil exports to 1.3 million to 1.4 million barrels a day.

If sanctions are lifted Iran could supply another 1 million to 1.2 million barrels of oil a day by next year, adding to the global oversupply and pressuring oil prices. Although Iran's oil sector will struggle to recover to its full production capacity, there's enough potential supply for other OPEC and global oil producers to contend with in coming months.

Write to Eric Yep at [e-mail]