Posted on 03/10/2017 9:11:40 AM PST by Lorianne
Shell has struck a deal to sell all its oil sands production assets in Canada, except for a 10-percent stake in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, as part of its $30-billion divestment program aimed at reducing its debt load that it accumulated with the acquisition of BG Group.
The total net value of the deal is $7.25 billion, and the buyer is Canadian Natural Resources, which will partner with Shell on another deal: the acquisition of Marathon Oil Canada Corporation, which has a 20-percent stake in the AOSP. The stake will be split equally between the partners, each contributing $1.25 billion in cash for the purchase. This will increase Shell’s holding in the project to 20 percent.
In addition, Shell will remain the operator of two non-production projects: the Scotford upgrader, which turns heavy oil sands crude into lighter petroleum, and the Quest carbon capture and storage project in a bid to maximize the returns from its Canadian downstream operations, the company said.
According to Bloomberg, the deal will bring Shell much closer to its $30-billion divestment target, after earlier this week it finally closed the negotiations around the split of its 20-year-old joint venture with Saudi Aramco in the U.S., Motiva. The split will result in a $2.2-billion gain for Shell, paid by Aramco. The Anglo-Dutch giant will also keep control of two refineries in Louisiana, while Aramco will remain the sole operator of the Port Arthur refinery in Texas, the biggest in the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Or did Shell shelve seashells by the seashore?..........
When I graduated from UC Berkeley in 1965, I went to work for Shell Development. They were working on methods of extracting oil from the Athabasca Tar Sands then, so they’ve spent more than half a century trying to make this a workable process.
Shell must know something...
lol
brilliant
I was thinking that the cost to get oil out of sand, might be a bit more than the cost of US fracking oil.
Selfish Shell shelved ocean-shelf seashells.
Who here is old enough to remember when “peak oil” was actually a thing? No fibbin’ now.....
I do. Shell used to have (and may still, for all I know) an annual conference called the Shell-Faculty Forum. In the mid 70’s, Shell geologists put on a peak oil presentation at the conference, marshaling the geological (and historical) evidence that hydrocarbons were a finite resource and the decline in the production curve was about to start. (I seem to recall that one or more of the excellent John McPhee books on geology carried much the same message)
Then, a guest speaker, an economist, spoke with the message that such would not be the case because higher prices would lead to substitution, discovery of hitherto unknown deposits/extraction techniques and even a re-definition of what was considered “exploitable hydrocarbons”. Suffice to say, he was roundly criticized for such foolish, unscientific challenge to “settled science”.
I suspect that economist retired a very rich man. Shell, on the other hand, BOUGHT a whole lot of reserves (e.g., Belridge, etc.).
Shell sells sand in Saskatchewan.
I knew that was coming.
nice :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.