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Rising crude prices help Shell boost profits 54 per cent
Calcutta News.Net
Thursday 2nd February, 2012
LONDON - Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's largest oil group, Thursday unveiled a 54% rise in full-year profits less than a month after shutting its final salary pension scheme to new employees in Britain, earning the ire of trade unions which accused it of "moral bankruptcy".
The company reported global annual earnings of $28.6 billion (18 billion pounds), while paying out $10.5 billion to shareholders during 2011 and promising to raise dividend levels further in the coming months.
"There is more (good profit) to come", said Peter Voser, Shell's chief executive, outlining a new programme of increased global investment as well as cuts to provide even better returns for investors.
"We have worked hard to generate a strong pipeline of investment opportunities for Shell All of this is supported by efficiency gains from our continuous improvement programmes," Voser said.
Riding high on the back of surging oil prices, which has risen by $30 per barrel over prices in 2010, and booming demand for gas, the company claims most of its money is earned outside Britain.
Voser blamed the sharp downturn in industry refining margins and low North American natural gas prices for having missed the market expectations.
To reverse the trend in North America, the company will shift its focus from shale gas to more profitable "tight oil", as a big drop in US natural gas prices is seeing a number of companies cut gas production.
The company's growth plans had nothing to appease upset trade unions. "Shell reminds us of the moral bankruptcy of the corporate elite. The company is needlessly closing its final salary scheme while posting colossal profits," said Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union.
"Rather than provide security to its future staff and still make a profit, it has chosen greed. Shell is not alone: Unilever is needlessly slashing its employees' pension benefits when there is no financial reason for doing so," he added.
Shell has further upset its staff by unveiling plans to shut its major research and development centre at Stanlow in Cheshire after disposing of its refinery there.
Voser blamed the high government taxes for the situation pointed out that two thirds of the UK pump price went straight to the government as tax. He said Shell's UK retail operations continued to come under "very heavy competitive pressures" as such there was a need for the right "tax structures to keep the oil and gas industry alive here".
The company was doing "our bit for balancing the books" of the Treasury through paying a heavy tax burden, it said, while denying that its recent sale of the Stanlow refinery to an Indian group had any impact on the wider refining and distribution problems that have recently hit the south-east of England.
Shares in Shell rose 11% last year while arch-rivals such as BP saw no growth at all but on Thursday the Anglo-Dutch group's stock market valuation fell slightly as the City was disappointed by the financial performance in the last quarter of the year.
Shell reported three-monthly earnings of $6.5bn, which was up on the same period last year but down quite heavily on the third quarter.
The company's total oil and gas production in the fourth quarter was lower, at 3.3m barrels of oil equivalent per day compared with 3.49m barrels a year ago. Shell said it would increase annual production to 3.7m barrels by 2014, helped by a $100billion investment plan which started in 2010.
The company said it was treading carefully, in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab spring, but hopes to reveal soon how its exploration programme has been going in Saudi Arabia and when it plans to get back to similar work in Libya.
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| By LoveGettingScrewed, 02-02-12, 11:47 PM |
| All the major corporations have the money for yearly C.E.O. bonuses and stock buy backs to enhance the dividends for the 1% but screw the working human being. |
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