Shell outlines 10-year plan, to hike oil output by 30% |
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Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:35
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LONDON: Royal Dutch/Shell Group is on a development road map. The company's chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, revealed that the company would take up several technology-driven projects, spend additional funds on R&D and pursue an acquisition path in order to achieve a target of 30 per cent increase in production by 2015.
van der Veer told news persons at the company's London headquarters prior to the annual general meeting that his 10-year plan will see the oil major producing five million barrels of oil per day against the current 3.5 million barrels a day. The focus is to make Royal Dutch/Shell Group an indispensable partner to oil-rich countries, he said.
He said the company is now involved in three "elephant projects" -- projects requiring investment of several billion dollars in investment. These are at Sakhalin island, in Russia; Bonga, off the coast of Nigeria; and in Nanhai, China. By 2015, there will be 10 such projects, he said.
"A lot of our projects are back-end loaded to this decade. That is one of the issues that we have struggled to get to the market. We will unlock 13 billion barrels of reserves that are not in production now. We know the stuff is there. You need projects to unlock this," he said.
One of the focus areas is natural gas and the company intends to be a global player in this segment, van der Veer said.
The company will hike its R&D budget, currently $553 million a year, by an unspecified amount, while it will have funds made available to make global acquisitions. It is in the process of unifying the two constituents -- Shell Transport and Trading Company and the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and a formal shareholders' approval would be sought at the forthcoming AGM.
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