Royal Dutch Shell Plc, which plans to dispose about $15 billion in assets, sold part of its stake in an oilfield off Brazil to Qatar Petroleum International Ltd. for about $1 billion.
Shell agreed to sell a 23 percent holding in the Parque das Conchas field, or BC-10, to Qatar’s state-run energy company. It will retain a 50 percent stake and will continue to operate the field, The Hague-based Shell said today in a statement.
“The transaction continues the growing stream of announcements relating to planned and potential divestments by the company,” Lucas Herrmann, a London-based analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, wrote in an e-mailed report.
Shell and its BC-10 partner, Oil & Natural Gas Corp. of India , in December increased their holdings in the field by buying out Petroleo Brasleiro SA for $1.64 billion and pre-empting a third-party bid. The Anglo-Dutch company, which issued its first profit warning in a decade this month, is selling assets to bring down its net investment in projects, after spending rose to a record $44 billion last year.
This is the second asset sale announced by Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden, who took over from Peter Voser this year. His company last week agreed to exit the Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project in Australia by selling its interests for $1.14 billion to Kuwait Foreign Exploration Petroleum Co.
Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, is seeking buyers for its interest in the Houston-to-Houma crude oil pipeline in the U.S., fuel-refining and marketing assets in Australia and Norway, and for oilfields in Nigeria. It may also exit its investment in Woodside Petroleum Ltd. and some shale assets in the U.S.
