AMSTERDAM: Royal Dutch Shell Plc. may consider restarting mothballed oilsands projects, but not until oil prices return to US$80 per barrel, according to the company’s top executive in North America.
“It probably needs to be in the US$80 range to be interesting, but it all depends on what it costs,” Marvin Odum, Shell’s director of the upstream Americas said in an interview Thursday. “It is a two–piece variable equation.”
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Like most major players in the oilsands, Shell has seen its costs come down “considerably,” easing the pain of oil prices that have tumbled 40 per cent in the past 12 months. West Texas Intermediate closed Thursday at US$52.78 a barrel.
But the European major has also shelved a couple of oilsands projects — the 80,000-barrels per day Carmon Creek development and the 200,000-bpd Pierre River project — due to unfavourable economics. The company has also yet to sanction a 100,000-bpd Jackpine expansion which has secured regulatory approval.
