Shell announced this week that it was abandoning efforts to develop oil from the Alaska’s outer continental shelf (OCS).
The company had drilled a well in the Burger prospect in the Chukchi Sea this past summer, but the results were disappointing. Although the company found hydrocarbons, the flows were insufficient to warrant further exploration. With that, Shell decided to suspend activities in Alaskan waters indefinitely.
Shell had such high hopes. If all went well, it would have produced an average of 650,000 barrels of oil for 35 years from the OCS. From 2025 until 2060, the OCS would power Alaska’s economy and contribute up to 10 per cent of domestic US oil production.
The project, which we estimated would cost more than US$300 billion in total, would have represented the largest infrastructure project in the United States in the next 15 years.
There was no more visionary initiative anywhere in the world.
For Shell, the Alaskan OCS was the third leg in the company’s answer to peak oil. Shell was among the first to recognise in 2005 that increasing oil production would be a heroic undertaking. Finding new oil would be “no cheaper, no easier”, it said.
To meet the challenge, Shell proposed a three-legged strategy. First, a massive gas-to-liquids plant would be constructed in Qatar. And it was. The Pearl GTL plant, as it is called today, came on line in 2011. It produces 8 per cent of Shell’s total output, equalling 260,000 barrels of diesel and lubricants daily.
The second leg of Shell’s strategy rested on a series of liquefied natural gas plants. These plans were essentially scrapped earlier this year when Shell cancelled four LNG projects.
This left the third leg, Alaska, which was perhaps the jewel in the crown. The scale of ambition, the volumes, the duration and the vision were breathtaking. The commitment was enduring. Even when the going got tough, Shell hung in there and continued to fight for Alaska, despite headwinds from regulators, Greenpeace and a series of technical setbacks.
With weak initial well results, however, Shell capitulated and has suspended operations in Alaska “for the foreseeable future”, which should be read as “permanently”.
The vision of oil scarcity that fuelled Shell’s ambitions after 2005 has dissolved, the victim of the shale revolution. As little as two years ago, the promise of shale was uncertain and underestimated (not least by me).
Whereas Shell was prepared to go to the ends of the earth for new oil, company management could have driven a couple of hours from corporate headquarters to a fully plumbed basin – the Permian – and produced more oil with nothing more than fracking and horizontal drilling.
Alaska is redundant under such circumstances. Consequently, until the shale revolution has run its course and oil prices have returned closer to $100 per barrel, expect Shell to keep its distance from Alaska. By the time the dust has settled, the wait could be a decade or more.
And yet I still believe in Shell’s earlier vision. Shale may prove an endless cornucopia of new oil, but maybe not. The oil and gas division of North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources has estimated that Bakken shale oil production would only be 35,000 barrels per day higher at the end of 2017 than it is today, even at Brent oil prices above $95 per barrel. Restarting US shale may take much higher prices and much more time than anticipated.
The flood might not last. No one expects shale growth to last past 2025, and many see a peak before 2020. Shell, by contrast, would not have begun flowing oil from Alaska until after 2025.
If we look in decadal terms rather than quarterly, Shell’s visionaries may ultimately be vindicated. Shale, to the best of our knowledge, will not cover us for more than a few more years. In all likelihood, we will need the oil for which Shell is searching in Alaska.
Nor has Shell entirely closed the door. Marvin Odum, Shell’s director of upstream Americas business, has said that Shell “continues to see important exploration potential in [offshore Alaska], and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US.”
With oil prices at current levels, however, even three months has become a long time for a company such as Shell. Why was its decision to abandon Alaska announced two days before the end of the quarter? One might speculate that third-quarter financial results would be so disastrous that Shell would want to be able to demonstrate tangible, direct and immediate commitment to reducing expenses and capital expenditures. There is no easier place to cut than Alaska.
Even if everything went well, Shell would not see a dime from Alaska for at least a decade. Terminating Alaska improves the bottom line immediately.
But at what cost? We have allowed the surplus of shale oil to lull us into a false sense of security, that oil has become “cheaper and easier”. And in the short run, it has. But the long run is far from decided.
For now, oil in Alaska is dead. It is dead in Norway and Russia as well. Norway’s Statoil is struggling with costs on its Arctic Johan Castberg project, and Rosneft has conceded that it cannot proceed in Russia’s Kara Sea without its partner ExxonMobil.
Arctic oil, until the shale revolution ends, is in a deep freeze. But this does not mean that we will not need that oil, nor that current oil prices are sustainable.
Rather, the economics of the oil business have become so dire that even the most committed and visionary of companies are forced to abandon their most cherished plans.
Steven Kopits is the managing director of Princeton Energy Advisors in New Jersey
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
More on Palestine-Israeli relations
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Nepotism is the name of the game
Salman Khan’s father, Salim Khan, is one of Bollywood’s most legendary screenwriters. Through his partnership with co-writer Javed Akhtar, Salim is credited with having paved the path for the Indian film industry’s blockbuster format in the 1970s. Something his son now rules the roost of. More importantly, the Salim-Javed duo also created the persona of the “angry young man” for Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan in the 1970s, reflecting the angst of the average Indian. In choosing to be the ordinary man’s “hero” as opposed to a thespian in new Bollywood, Salman Khan remains tightly linked to his father’s oeuvre. Thanks dad.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Qyubic
Started: October 2023
Founder: Namrata Raina
Based: Dubai
Sector: E-commerce
Current number of staff: 10
Investment stage: Pre-seed
Initial investment: Undisclosed
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
