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Type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Petroleum |
Founded | 1901Melbourne & Sydney | in
Headquarters | , Australia |
Number of locations | Branch office in Brisbane Supply base in Darwin |
Products | Coal seam gas, liquefied natural gas, natural gas, aviation fuel |
Number of employees | 1,000 |
Parent | Shell (upstream business) [note 1] |
Subsidiaries | QGC Shell Energy Australia |
Website | shell.com.au |
Shell Australia is the Australian subsidiary of Shell. Shell has operated in Australia since 1901, initially delivering bulk fuel into Australia, then establishing storage and distribution terminals, oil refineries, and a network of service stations. It extended its Australian activities to oil exploration, petrochemicals and coal mining, and became a leading partner in Australia's largest resource development project, the North West Shelf Venture. [1]
In August 2014, Shell sold its downstream business in Australia, including its Geelong refinery and 870 retail sites, along with its bulk fuels, bitumen, chemicals and part of its lubricants businesses, to the Dutch firm Vitol, for A$2.9 billion. [2]
Aside from its aviation fuel business which was retained, Shell's remaining Australian activities are in upstream businesses, comprising exploration, liquified natural gas (LNG) and onshore coal seam gas.
Shell holds large reserves in the North West Shelf, Gorgon, Browse Basin, onshore coal seam gas Surat and Bowen Basins in Queensland. It also maintains a substantial exploration portfolio in Australia with major representation in permits and reserves offshore Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
A new head office in King Square, Perth opened in January 2016. [3]
Shell's involvement in Australia began in 1901 when bulk fuel handling facilities commissioned by the 'Shell' Transport and Trading Company of London at Gore Bay, Sydney and on leased land in Melbourne, near Williamstown railway station. The arrival of the ship Turbo on 3 June was the first ever delivery of bulk kerosene to Australia. [1]
In 1903, the tanker SS Petriana – owned by the Shell/Royal Dutch joint venture Asiatic Petroleum Company – was wrecked outside of Port Phillip Bay, causing Australia's first major oil spill. [4]
In 1905, the Shell Transport and Trading Company and the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company established the British Imperial Oil Company in Australia as a joint venture. In 1916, Shell began bulk delivery to garages equipped with pumps. In 1926 it acquired the Neptune Oil Company; a year later the British Imperial Oil Company was renamed the Shell Company of Australia, and in 1928 it purchased the Clyde Refinery in Sydney. [1]
In 1954, Shell opened its second oil refinery in Geelong, and in 1959 established a detergent alkylate plant at Geelong and a petrochemical plant at Clyde. Its oil development arm was very active in the 1960s exploring large areas of onshore Australia as well as offshore opportunities. [1]
In 1984, domestic sales of LNG from the North West Shelf began, and a year later, Shell and its joint venture partners signed a sales and purchase agreement for North West Shelf LNG with eight Japanese electricity and gas utilities. By this stage Shell had increased its holding in joint venture operator Woodside Petroleum from 21% to 40%. [1] The company is one of six participants and holds a 16.67% equity stake, [5] alongside five other investors: BP, BHP Billiton Petroleum, Chevron, Mitsubishi/Mitsui and Woodside. [6]
In August 2014, Shell sold its Australian refinery in Geelong and petrol stations for A$2.9 billion (US$2.6 billion) to Vitol, a Geneva based company. [7] Vitol operates these assets as Viva Energy, which maintains Shell branding on its service stations under a brand licence arrangement.
In May 2011, Royal Dutch Shell finalised its investment for the world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility. Shell had explored the concept of a FLNG in Namibia in the 1990s, but was abandoned due to unfavourable economic conditions. The initiative was relaunched in 2007 following the discovery of the offshore Prelude field located off Australia's north-west coast and was estimated to contain about 85 billion cubic metres (3 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas equivalent reserves. [8] [9]
The floating vessel to be used for the Prelude field, known as Prelude FLNG, was still being constructed in Geoje, South Korea in mid-June 2014. Promoted as the longest floating structure in the world, the vessel will consist of a processing structure, measuring 93 metres (305 ft) in height from the deck, that will take in the equivalent of 17 thousand cubic metres (110 thousand barrels) of oil per day in natural gas and cool it into liquefied natural gas for transport and sale in Asia. The hull of the vessel was completed in December 2013 and the Prelude was scheduled to start producing LNG in 2016—analysts estimated the total cost of construction at more than US$12 billion. [8] [9] [10]
In December 2018, production started at the facility. [11] The company has a 67.5 percent hold, alongside investors CPC Corporation, Inpex Corporation, and Korea Gas Corporation.
In July 2011, the Federal Government gave approval for the company to drill an exploration well 50 kilometres (31 mi) to the west of the Ningaloo Marine Park. The drilling operation will occur at depths of around 1,300 metres (4,300 ft), the deepest ever in Australian waters. [12]
In February 2019, Royal Dutch Shell was granted leases for $10 billion (AUS) towards the Surat project, which it will undergo with PetroChina under the joint venture of Arrow Energy. [13] In December 2017, a 27-year deal was agreed in which Arrow would sell output to the company's Queensland Curtis LNG (QCNLG) project. [14] It will use infrastructure from the company's QCLNG project do develop the biggest coal seam gas resource in the country, which is predicted to speed up the process and reduce the environmental impact. [15]
Shell was tile sponsor of Dick Johnson Racing from 1987 until 2004. Having remained as a minor sponsor, it again became title sponsor for the rebranded DJR Team Penske in 2017. [16] It also returned as the official fuel supplier for the series, having been so between 1987 and 2001. [17]
An oil platform, oil rig, offshore platform, or oil and/or gas production platform is a large structure with facilities to extract, and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms will also contain facilities to accommodate their workforce, although it is also common for there to be a separate accommodation platform bridge linked to the production platform. Most commonly, oil platforms engage in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or float. In some arrangements the main facility may have storage facilities for the processed oil. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections. These sub-sea solutions may consist of one or more subsea wells or of one or more manifold centres for multiple wells.
Woodside Energy Group Ltd is an Australian petroleum exploration and production company. Woodside is the operator of oil and gas production in Australia and also Australia's largest independent dedicated oil and gas company. It is a public company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and has its headquarters in Perth, Western Australia. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Woodside was ranked as the 1328th-largest public company in the world. Woodside Energy Group also has Burrup Hub, the largest fossil fuel project currently proposed in Australia, involving the extraction of six untapped gas fields and the drilling of 84 wells off the Western Australian coast.
PetroChina Company Limited is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. The company is currently Asia's largest oil and gas producer and was China's second biggest oil producer in 2006. Traded in Hong Kong and New York, the mainland enterprise announced its plans to issue stock in Shanghai in November 2007, and subsequently entered the constituent of SSE 50 Index. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, PetroChina was ranked as the 32nd-largest public company in the world.
BG Group plc was a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. On 8 April 2015, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire BG Group for $70 billion, subject to regulatory and shareholder agreement. The sale was completed on 15 February 2016. Prior to the takeover, BG Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In the 2015 Forbes Global 2000, BG Group was ranked as the 583rd largest public company in the world.
Very large floating structures (VLFSs) or very large floating platforms (VLFPs) are artificial islands, which may be constructed to create floating airports, bridges, breakwaters, piers and docks, storage facilities, wind and solar power plants, for military purposes, to create industrial space, emergency bases, entertainment facilities, recreation parks, mobile offshore structures and even for habitation. Currently, several different concepts have been proposed for building floating cities or huge living complexes. Some units have been constructed and are presently in operation.
The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company or ADNOC is the State-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is the world's 12th largest oil company by production. As of 2021, the company has an oil production capacity exceeding 4 million b/d with plans to increase to 5 million bpd by 2030. It is the United Arab Emirate's largest oil company.
QatarEnergy, formerly Qatar Petroleum (QP), is a state owned petroleum company of Qatar. The company operates all oil and gas activities in Qatar, including exploration, production, refining, transport, and storage. The President & CEO is Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, Minister of State for Energy Affairs. The company's operations are directly linked with state planning agencies, regulatory authorities, and policy making bodies. Together, revenues from oil and natural gas amount to 60% of the country's GDP. As of 2018 it was the third largest oil company in the world by oil and gas reserves. In 2020, the company had total revenues of US$21bn, a net income of US$7.9bn, and total assets of US$116bn. In 2021, QatarEnergy was the fifth largest gas company in the world.
Equinor ASA is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, Equinor was ranked as the 169th-largest public company in the world. As of 2021, the company has 21,126 employees.
Vitol is a Dutch energy and commodity trading company that was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 by Henk Viëtor and Jacques Detiger. Though physical trading, logistics and distribution are at the core of the business, these are complemented by refining, shipping, terminals, exploration and production, power generation, and retail businesses. Vitol has 40 offices worldwide and its largest operations are in Geneva, Houston, London, and Singapore. With revenues of $231 billion in 2018, Vitol is the largest independent energy trader in the world, and would rank ninth on the Fortune Global 500 list. Because Vitol does not publish its profits widely, much like most of its competitors in commodity trading, it is largely excluded from rankings. The company does provide financial information to its lenders and some energy groups with which it trades. The company ships more than 350 million tonnes of crude oil per year and controls 250 supertankers and other vessels to move it around the world. On average it handles more than 7.6 million barrels a day of oil and products - roughly equivalent to the daily consumption of Japan - the world's fourth largest oil consumer after the United States, China, and India.
The North West Shelf Venture, situated in the north-west of Western Australia, is Australia's largest resource development project. It involves the extraction of petroleum at offshore production platforms, onshore processing and export of liquefied natural gas, and production of natural gas for industrial, commercial and domestic use within the state.
The petroleum industry in Western Australia is the largest contributor to Australia's production of most petroleum products.
The natural gas in Qatar covers a large portion of the world supply of natural gas. According to the Oil & Gas Journal, as of January 1, 2011, reserves of natural gas in Qatar were measured at approximately 896 trillion cubic feet ; this measurement means that the state contains 14% of all known natural-gas reserves, as the world's third-largest reserves, behind Russia and Iran. The majority of Qatar's natural gas is located in the massive offshore North Field, which spans an area roughly equivalent to Qatar itself. A part of the world's largest non-associated, natural-gas field, the North Field, is a geological extension of Iran's South Pars / North Dome Gas-Condensate field, which holds an additional 450 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural-gas reserves.
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange. It is one of the oil and gas "supermajors" and by revenue and profits is consistently one of the largest companies in the world, ranking within the top 10 of the Fortune global 500 since 2000. Measured by both its own emissions, and the emissions of all the fossil fuels it sells, Shell was the ninth-largest corporate producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 1988–2015.
Qatar Gas Transport Company Limited, commonly known as Nakilat is a Qatari shipping and maritime company. Its LNG shipping fleet is the largest in the world, comprising 69 vessels. The company also jointly owns one Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) and 4 very large LPG carriers (VLGCs). Through its in-house shipmanagement, Nakilat manages and operates the four very large LPG carriers and 14 LNG carriers.
China National Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC Group, is one of the largest national oil companies in China, and the third-largest national oil company in China, after CNPC and China Petrochemical Corporation. The CNOOC Group focuses on the exploitation, exploration and development of crude oil and natural gas in offshore China, along with its subsidiary COOEC.
A floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility, is a floating production storage and offloading unit that conducts liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations for developing offshore natural gas resources. Floating above an offshore natural gas field, the FLNG facility produces, liquefied stores and transfers LNG at sea before carriers ship it directly to markets.
Prelude FLNG is a floating liquefied natural gas platform owned by Shell plc and built by the Technip–Samsung Consortium (TSC) in South Korea for a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell, KOGAS, and Inpex. The hull was launched in December 2013.
TechnipFMC plc is a French-American, UK-domiciled global oil and gas company that provides complete project life cycle services for the energy industry. It was ranked 23rd among world's Top 225 International Design Firms in the year 2017 by Engineering News-Record. The company was formed by the merger of FMC Technologies of the United States and Technip of France that was announced in 2016 and completed in 2017. TechnipFMC acts in three distinct segments: subsea, offshore/onshore, and surface projects. These projects include offshore oil and gas exploration and extraction platforms, rigs, crude oil refinery, petrochemical plants such as Ethylene, Hydrogen, SynGas plants, Naptha, Benzene etc. plastics & rubber industry, fertiliser plant, onshore as well as floating LNG plants. The company is legally domiciled in the UK, and has major operations in Houston and Paris where its predecessor companies were headquartered. It has about 23,000 employees from 126 nationalities and operates in 48 countries. TechnipFMC stock is listed on the NYSE and Euronext Paris exchange, and is a component of the CAC Next 20 and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The French government owns a 4 percent stake in the company.
Viva Energy is an Australian company that owns the Geelong Oil Refinery and retails Shell-branded fuels across Australia. It provides fuel to the Coles Express retail network.