Shell Share Discussion Threads

[ariane] 26/10/2017 17:46

WILL STERLING COLLAPSE AND MAKE THE DIVI WORTH MORE

or will interest rate increases put pay to all that

[ariane] 26/10/2017 17:45

DIVIDEND
3rd quarter 2017
Event Date
Announcement date November 2, 2017
Ex-dividend date RDS A ADSs and RDS B ADSs November 15, 2017
Ex-dividend date RDS A and RDS B shares November 16, 2017
Record date November 17, 2017
Scrip reference share price announcement date November 23, 2017
Closing of scrip election and currency election (See Note) December 1, 2017
Pounds sterling and euro equivalents announcement date December 7, 2017
Payment date December 20, 2017

[waldron] 26/10/2017 15:44

Shell UK submits revised development plan for Fram field in North Sea
EBR Staff Writer
Published 25 October 2017

Shell UK has submitted revised plan for the development of the Fram oil and gas condensate field in the UK North Sea.

The Shell-operated Fram oil and gas field is situated in Blocks 29/3a, 29/4c, 29/8a, 29/9c in the Central North Sea, in water depth of 100m.

The Fram field is located 220km east of Aberdeen and 50km west of the median line between the UK and Norway.

The firm submitted the Environmental Statement (ES) to the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) for the development of the field as a subsea tieback to the Shearwater platform.

In 2013, Shell said it plans to reevaluate the field development plan, following unexpected initial drilling results.

The Fram field development was initially planned for a 35,000 barrels oil equivalent per day development using floating, production, storage, and off-loading (FPSO) technology.

As part of the reassessment program, Shell had decided to discontinue several important contracts associated with the development of the field.

Shell has 32% interest in the Fram oil and gas field while Esso Exploration & Production holds the remaining 68% interest.

According to estimates, the Fram field holds around 390 million barrels of hydrocarbons in place.

With an expected life span of 20-30 years, the field was expected to have an average production capacity of around 35,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day. The field’s two-third production will be gas and the rest will be oil.

[waldron] 26/10/2017 12:41

""The world has completely changed," Total Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanné told reporters earlier this month.

[waldron] 26/10/2017 12:38

Amid Low Prices, Oil Giants Gush About Breaking Even
26/10/2017 10:59am
Dow Jones News

BP (LSE:BP.)
Intraday Stock Chart

Today : Thursday 26 October 2017
Click Here for more BP Charts.

By Sarah Kent

The world's biggest oil companies have a suddenly popular measure for success: breaking even.

Once obscure and little noted, the break-even number has become an obsession for investors in oil giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC and Chevron Corp. as crude prices stay mired between $50 and $60 a barrel. At its simplest, the metric represents the oil price that a company needs to generate enough cash so it can cover its capital spending and dividend payouts.

BP says its break-even was $47 a barrel in the first half of the year, and the company is targeting between $35 and $40 a barrel by 2021, assuming prices stay about where they are today. Overall, Europe's biggest oil companies have cut break-evens to around $50 a barrel, according to Barclays. Exxon doesn't release a break-even but has succeeded in covering its costs with cash from operations for the last three quarters, when international benchmark Brent crude averaged just over $51 a barrel, according to Barclays.

Investors focused on the healthy dividends that make oil-company stocks appealing say they will be watching for news about break-even prices as Exxon, Chevron and Total SA prepare to announce third-quarter earnings on Friday, and BP and Royal Dutch Shell PLC next week.

"It's a crucial thing we look at," said Rohan Murphy, energy analyst at Allianz Global Investors, which holds stocks in BP and other large oil companies. "If the oil price were $70 it wouldn't matter so much, but at the moment we're on a knife edge, so it matters more."

The industry's intense focus on the break-even represents a stark change from the era of rising oil prices, when the emphasis often was more on companies' ability to increase production rather than to generate cash.

BP's share price slumped 4% in February after the company said it needed oil to hit $60 a barrel to break even this year. Six months later, BP said spending cuts allowed the company to break even at $47 a barrel in the first half. The stock moved up 2%. The company has kept its dividend unchanged throughout the downturn.

At Total's investor day last month, the phrase "break even" came up around 30 times.

Big oil companies say they have made progress in cutting costs since 2014, when oil prices entered a long downturn. Brent crude was trading at just below $60 a barrel this week, down from over $114 in June 2014.

The companies say they can maintain those lower levels of spending, bring down their break-even costs further and begin again to expand their operations--all without relying on an oil-price recovery.

"The break-even cost of oil and gas companies is going to the $40s and $30s today," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley told the Oil & Money conference in London this month. "It's actually healthy. I think $100 a barrel was not healthy."

Investors, however, remain nervous about the viability of their dividends. While big oil companies are back in black, many of them are still not generating enough cash to cover the payouts, despite ambitious targets to lower break-even prices.

The methods companies use when disclosing their break-even prices often vary from company.

Chevron says it can break even this year at $50 a barrel--if revenue from its asset sales is included. Total says it will be able to break even at less than $30 a barrel in 2019--excluding its dividend costs.

Total, Shell and other companies use so-called scrip programs that allow them to pay a portion of their dividend in company stock, which helps them bring down the oil price they need to cover spending. While effective, the tactic isn't sustainable in the long-term without diluting investors' holdings.

Companies also often refer to project-specific break-evens, another metric that has new currency since prices crashed. Shell has said it is looking at new projects that can be profitable even if oil is at less than $40 a barrel, but that doesn't reflect the overall price the company needs to cover spending and dividends.

U.S. shale-oil players have faced particular criticism from investors over how they define project break-evens, sometimes not accounting for all associated costs, such as the amount they pay to lease land. Most shale companies claim their wells generate a 20% rate of return or higher, even at today's prices. Yet in the last three years, almost none has posted a positive quarterly net income.

Few investors cared about the break-even when oil prices were $100 a barrel or more. Back then, the industry was consumed with finding new sources of oil, resulting in spending that caused the break-even for big European companies to balloon to $152 a barrel in 2013, Barclays says.

Now, companies that once chased megaprojects are using new technology to eke out more barrels and lower costs.

BP said it expects production costs this year to be 40% lower than in 2013. Chevron is working to bring down its break-even to a point where it can sustain the company's decadeslong tradition of dividend increases. Shell is moving toward a lower debt target that will allow it to turn off its scrip program and commence share buybacks.

In a sign that things are improving, Norway's Statoil ASA said Thursday it will remove its scrip program in the fourth quarter, fully covering its dividend with cash.

Total has said it would be able to cover its full cash dividend at $50 a barrel in 2019.

""The world has completely changed," Total Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanné told reporters earlier this month.

Lynn Cook contributed to this article.

Write to Sarah Kent at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2017 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)

[waldron] 26/10/2017 08:27

FJ

YOUR POSTS ARE VERY MUCH APPRRECIATED

BUT I PREFER YOU TO USE YOUR EXPERTISE TO EXPLAIN SHORT MEDIUM AND LONG TERM MOVEMENTS
IF POSSIBLE

SO THAT BUYING AND SELLING OPPORTUNITIES ARE AT AN OPTIMUM

SOMETIMES YOU JUST SEEM TO RAMP IT AS THOUGH AN AIM SHARE

WHAT EVER THE SHARE PRICE IS DOING OVER THE 3 MONTHS PERIOD I BELIEVE IS OF LITTLE INTEREST AS YOU ARE A DIVI INCOME MAN

ENJOY YOUR DAY AND COMING WEEKEND

[maywillow] 25/10/2017 17:06

The fox is out of the box again



8 DAYS TO GO

[grahamite2] 25/10/2017 12:45

I do know how Shell got its name, as it happens.



Remarkable tale of the vital importance of oil in world history.

At one point in the early 20th century, Shell could have bought BP for next to nothing when BP nearly went bust - and vice versa!

[grupo guitarlumber] 25/10/2017 12:08

JUMP 4 DINNER

[careful] 24/10/2017 19:12

Better still, anything that impresses Marylyn is justified.

[careful] 24/10/2017 18:53

Interesting history.
Anyone know how Shell was named?
addition; just google it. Isn't research simple these days?

[waldron] 24/10/2017 18:53

FROZEN ONES BOUGHT 1957 FROM CAFE NEXT TO OLD DEPTFORD PUB BOMB SITE

[2hoggy] 24/10/2017 17:51

Lubbly,jubbly,I reckon its going over 24 easily if those figures are as good as they say...

[waldron] 24/10/2017 16:38

makes it nicely into 2375 to 2475 BOX

8 OR IS IT 9 DAYS TO GO

[champian] 22/10/2017 12:19

The revenue in Q3 will double from 2016, when it reports on 3 nov.