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Shell (RDS.A) to Divest Stake in Thai Gas Field for $900M

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Integrated energy major Royal Dutch Shell plc  recently signed a contract to offload its stake in an offshore Thai gas field. The buyer – a unit of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. – will pay $900 million for the stake.

According to this deal, Kufpec – a subsidiary of Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. – will acquire two subsidiaries of Shell. These affiliates own a combined 22.2% interest in the Bongkot field and the adjoining offshore acreage.

Shell purchased the Bongkot field in the process of acquiring BG Group Plc for $70 billion in 2015. This field started production in 1993. Shell has assured cost savings of $2.5 billion, asset disposals of at least $30 billion within four years and a share buyback of $25 billion from 2017 to 2020 in order to get shareholder approval for the deal.

Headquartered in Hague, the Netherlands, Shell is one of the largest integrated oil and gas companies in the world. It explores for and extracts crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. It has interests in chemicals as well as power generation and renewable energy. The company has been present in Gabon for more than 50 years and operates the Rabi Kounga and Gamba fields in the country.

Year to date, the Zacks categorized International Oil and Gas Integrated industry registered growth of 21.6%. However, the Shell stock has outperformed the industry by gaining 24.6%.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC Price

The company’s acquisition of BG Group, the third-largest energy player in the U.K., has further improved its prospects. Shell will now be able to boost its oil and gas reserves by almost 25% and will benefit from BG Group’s big projects worldwide. We believe that the recent deal to sell some of its Gulf of Mexico assets is an important step toward executing its plan to divest $6–$8 billion of properties this year and maintain its generous dividend policy.

However, the difficult operating environment – continued weakness in commodity prices and depressed refining margins – keeps us on the sidelines.

As a result, Shell currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), which implies that the stock will outperform the broader U.S. equity market over the next one to three months.

Some better-ranked players from the broader energy sector include Braskem S.A. (BAK - Free Report) , McDermott International, Inc. and Suncor Energy Inc. (SU - Free Report) . All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

In the last four quarters, Braskem posted an average positive earnings surprise of 105.5%.

In the last quarter, McDermott posted a positive earnings surprise of 250.00%.

In the last quarter, Suncor posted a positive earnings surprise of 300.00%.

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