Shell plans refinery, service station sales
LONDON (Reuters) - Oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) plans to sell around 8 percent of its refinery capacity and could also sell services stations in Greece and elsewhere, Chief Executive Peter Voser said on Thursday.
Shell plans to shed 330,000 barrels per day of crude processing capacity as the company focuses on large, sophisticated facilities in high growth markets.
Voser said refinery interests in Germany and New Zealand and Shell's Greek service stations were among the assets being considered for sale. Shell previously said it was reviewing its Montreal East facility in Canada.
"We would like to have a certain size of refinery. We like to have a certain complexity of refinery because both of those give us much more economies of scale and they can weather the downturns better than niche refineries," Voser told reporters on a conference call.
Refining margins are under pressure globally as new plants come onstream, and demand for motor fuels ebbs in developed markets.
If it fails to sell the refineries under review, Shell may convert them into storage and distribution terminals.
In the first half of the year, Shell made hundreds of millions of dollars from arbitraging markets and storing oil.
The company buys oil on the spot market and simultaneously sells it forward at a higher price, due to an upward structure in the price curve called "contango."
