Chevron and Shell each made presentations to investors this week, reviewing 2010 results and outlining their strategies and plans for 2011 and beyond. In each presentation, the companies' top executives highlighted exploration and production successes for 2010 and mapped out major capital projects for the next three years. Alaska was notably absent from the companies' maps and charts, and executives' descriptions of promising major projects across the world.
Chevron plans a 20% increase in their upstream capital budget, to $22.6 billion. This includes $2.6 billion in exploration spending, in part on 60 appraisal and development wells worldwide. They also plan more than $13 billion in major capital projects, including 70 wells in the Marcellus Shales, which according to Chevron executives, has "some of the lowest gas development costs in North America."
Shell plans more than $20 billion per year in upstream capital investment each year through 2014, just under 40% of which will be in the Americas. In 2011 for North America natural gas, Shell plans $3 billion in spending for more than 400 wells, half in Canada and the other half in the Lower 48.
Separately, Shell released their annual report for 2010. Alaska's operations were described in a single paragraph that documented the setbacks Shell has had in their drilling program in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, where the company holds 410 federal leases. The U.S. offshore drilling moratorium and adverse rulings on EPA Air Quality permits have pushed drilling back to 2012 at the earliest, according to Shell.
Comments