Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (RDS.A) News: Buyback, Personnel, Ukraine, and Scandal

Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) continues to make the tabloids. The good news is that the buyback plan is still in place. Last week (September 12th), the company bought 585,000 “B” shares at a price of $2166.21 pence per share. To date, there remain 2,507,022,307 “B” shares and 3,821,611,712 “A” outstanding shares. The purchase, however, did not push stock price higher and both shares closed on a downtrend.
Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS-A)

News also relate to managerial updates. John Abbott, currently Executive Vice President of Manufacturing, will replace Ben van Beurden as Downstream Director. While Ben will take his new post next January, John is due to start on October 1st. John has worked at Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) for over 30 years, managing public protests around tar sands operations and several projects in Canada.

More good news comes in the way of a new partnership. Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) has signed a partnership with Ukrainian based Nadra Yuzovskaya for the exploration of the Yuzovska deposit. Government officials expect the firm to spend $500 million surveying at the field, and an additional $10 billion to be spent in developing the site and infrastructure. Operations are not expected to start before the end of 2014 and the company expects to find natural gas, shale gas and gas from tight sandstones. The firm intends to extract whatever gas it remains in the depleted field using well proven techniques, pioneered in the USA.

Last, Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) has been associated with another corruption scandal. Let us recall that the firm has had its share of similar issues in the USA, UK, Nigeria, and Ireland. It comes as a surprise that practices continue down the same road, since it only creates unwanted publicity. This time the geography is China, its ally the Chinese Petroleum Corp (CNPC), and the issue concerns a $13 billion asset.

The new asset would have refined 20 million tons of crude and produced 1.2 million tons of ethylene a year. However, construction set to start last year never began. Also, the reasons for the cancellation have been tainted by obscurity. Some newspapers have printed that local opposition and politics are the reason for the halt. More, a Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A)’s spokesman said that feasibility studies are being conducted still. But, according to Reuters “A high-level Chinese government probe into corruption at CNPC widened at the end of August, with three additional senior officials at the energy giant being investigated over alleged wrongdoing”.

Disclosure: Jodor Jalit holds no position in any of the mentioned stocks.

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