Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as Shell, is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in the Netherlands and incorporated in the United Kingdom. Created by the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum and UK-based Shell Transport & Trading, it is the fourth largest company in the world as of 2014, in terms of revenue,[1] and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors".

Shell is also one of the world's most valuable companies.[3] As of January 2013 the largest shareholder is Capital Research Global Investors with 9.85% ahead of BlackRock in second with 6.89%.[4] Shell topped the 2013 Fortune Global 500 list of the world's largest companies.[5] Royal Dutch Shell revenue was equal to 84% of the Netherlands' $555.8 billion GDP at the time.[6]

Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading. It has minor renewable energy activities in the form of biofuels[7] and wind.[8] It has operations in over 90 countries, produces around 3.1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has 44,000 service stations worldwide.[9] Shell Oil Company, its subsidiary in the United States, is one of its largest businesses.[10]

Shell has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of £129.8 billion at the close of trading on 13 April 2015, the largest of any company listed on the London Stock Exchange.[11] It has secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange.

Origins
In February 1907, the Royal Dutch Shell Group was created through the amalgamation of two rival companies: Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company Ltd of the United Kingdom. It was a move largely driven by the need to compete globally with Standard Oil.[12] Royal Dutch Petroleum Company was a Dutch company founded in 1890 to develop an oilfield in Sumatra.[13] For various reasons, the new firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the merging companies maintained their legal existence, but operated as a single-unit partnership for business purposes. The terms of the merger gave 60 percent ownership of the new group to the Dutch arm and 40 percent to the British.[14]

The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel.[15] Their father had owned an antique company in Houndsditch, London,[16] which expanded in 1833 to import and sell sea-shells, after which the company "Shell" took its name.[13][17]

National patriotic sensibilities would not permit a full-scale merger or takeover of either of the two companies.[14] The Dutch company, Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij, was in charge at The Hague of production and manufacture.[18] A British company was formed, called the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, based in London, to direct the transport and storage of the products.

20th century
During the First World War, Shell was the main supplier of fuel to the British Expeditionary Force.[19] It was also the sole supplier of aviation fuel and supplied 80 percent of the British Army's TNT.[19] It also volunteered all of its shipping to the British Admiralty.[19]

The German invasion of Romania in 1916 saw 17 percent of the group's worldwide production destroyed.[19]

In 1919, Shell took control of the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company and in 1921 formed Shell-Mex Limited which marketed products under the "Shell" and "Eagle" brands in the United Kingdom. In 1929, Shell Chemicals was founded.[19] By the end of the 1920s, Shell was the world's leading oil company, producing 11 percent of the world's crude oil supply and owning 10 percent of its tanker tonnage.[19]

Shell Mex House was completed in 1931, and was the head office for Shell's marketing activity worldwide.[19] In 1932, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times, Shell-Mex merged its UK marketing operations with those of British Petroleum to create Shell-Mex and BP,[20] a company that traded until the brands separated in 1975. Royal Dutch Company ranked 79th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[21]

The 1930s saw Shell's Mexican assets seized by the local government.[19] After the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940, the head office of the Dutch companies was moved to Curacao.[19]

Around 1952, Shell was the first company to purchase and use a computer in the Netherlands.[22] The computer, a Ferranti Mark 1*, was assembled and used at the Shell laboratory in Amsterdam. In 1970 Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 and now forms part of BHP Billiton.

21st century
In November 2004, following a period of turmoil caused by the revelation that Shell had been overstating its oil reserves, it was announced that the Shell Group would move to a single capital structure, creating a new parent company to be named Royal Dutch Shell plc, with its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, a secondary listing on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, its headquarters and tax residency in The Hague, Netherlands and its registered office in London. The unification was completed on 20 July 2005 and the original owners delisted their companies from the respective exchanges. On 20 July 2005, the Shell Transport & Trading Company plc was delisted from the LSE,[24] where as, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company from NYSE on 18 November 2005.[25] The shares of the company were issued at a 60/40 advantage for the shareholders of Royal Dutch in line with the original ownership of the Shell Group.[26]

During the 2009 Iraqi oil services contracts tender, a consortium led by Shell (45%) and which included Petronas (30%) was awarded a production contract for the "Majnoon field" in the south of Iraq, which contains an estimated 12.6 billion barrels (2.00×109 m3) of oil.[27][28] The "West Qurna 1 field" production contract was awarded to a consortium led by ExxonMobil (60%) and included Shell (15%).[29]

In February 2010 Shell and Cosan formed a 50:50 joint-venture, Raízen, comprising all of Cosan's Brazilian ethanol, energy generation, fuel distribution and sugar activities, and all of Shell's Brazilian retail fuel and aviation distribution businesses.[30] In March 2010, Shell announced the sale of some of its assets, including its liquid petroleum gas (LPG) business, to meet the cost of a planned $28bn capital spending programme. Shell invited buyers to submit indicative bids, due by 22 March, with a plan to raise $2–3bn from the sale.[31] In June 2010, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to acquire all the business of East Resources for a cash consideration of $4.7 billion. The transaction included East Resources' tight gas fields.[32]

Over the course of 2013, the corporation began the sale of its US shale gas assets and cancelled a US$20 billion gas project that was to be constructed in the US state of Louisiana. A new CEO Ben van Beurden was appointed in January 2014, prior to the announcement that the corporation's overall performance in 2013 was 38 per cent lower than 2012—the value of Shell's shares fell by 3 per cent as a result.[33] Following the sale of the majority of its Australian assets in February 2014, the corporation plans to sell a further US$15 billion worth of assets in the period leading up to 2015, with deals announced in Australia, Brazil and Italy.[34]

Royal Dutch Shell announced on 8 April 2015 it had agreed to buy BG Group for £47 billion (US$70 billion), subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. The oil giant planned to cut 6,500 jobs in the year of 2015, as reported on July 30, 2015.