Earnings Labs

Shell plc (SHEL)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Sat, Jan 31, 2015

$90.34

+1.60%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.
Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ben van Beurden

Management

Thank you very much. So, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to all of you. I am sure your familiar by now with the disclaimer statements. And we said that I’m looking forward to updating you on what we’ve achieved in 2014, and what our plans for the future. We have Simon Henry here as well. He will talk a little bit more about the results and the plans in detail as well. But let me first of all start with the health and safety of our people and our neighbors, and the environmental performance that remain the top priorities for Shell. As I have said many times before, I do believe that we have the right safety culture in the Company. And also this year we can say that our track-record is improving and I believe very competitive here. At the same time, I also have to say that regrettably we had fatalities in 2014 and other safety incidents so we will have to continue as a matter of fact we will always have to continue with our safety drive, which we call in the Company Goal Zero, for obvious reasons to further improve and to stay on the improving track. We are following a long-term and a very strategy, to grow our cash flows across the cycle and to deliver competitive returns. And I firmly believe that Shell is the industry-leader when it comes to Deepwater to integrated gas, technology, integration, and large-scale project development. And we have some of the most talented people in our industry working at Shell, and are working on adding more value for our shareholders. And I believe our dividend track-record is second to none, $15.2 billion of dividends and buybacks in 2014, and that clearly underlines our commitment to…

Simon Henry

Management

Thanks Ben. Good to be here with you today. I'll update you on the financial framework. But first, obviously I will start with 2014 summary. So excluding the identified items, the underlying current cost of supply or CCS earnings were $3.3 billion for the quarter that's a 13% increase in earnings per share from the fourth quarter last year. On a Q4-to-Q4 basis we saw lower earnings in Upstream, where oil prices were sharply lower $32 a barrel, some offset from strong volume growth, better operating performance and fewer well write-downs in explorations, and we had substantially stronger results from oil products. And with impact of a good trading and marketing environment, and the benefits of the improvement programs we have put in place in Downstream showing through. Cash flow from operations was some $9.6 billion, that's an increase of nearly 60% Q4-to-Q4 that includes a $7.5 billion swing positive in working capital also a negative impact of around $3 billion on the closure adjustment to offset to an extent reflecting falling oil prices in the quarter in both cases. So looking at 2014 overall the underlying earnings, cash flow and returns all increased compared with 2013, even though Brent prices fell by $10. On a full year basis between return on average capital employed was 10%, and the free cash flow was $25 billion, distributions were $15.2 billion in 2014 that includes the dividend declared and the share buybacks. Turning to the businesses in a little bit more details, so excluding identified items, the upstream earnings fourth quarter were $1.7 billion that is decrease year-on-year and that decrease was predominantly due to the lower oil prices. The results also did include a $330 million of clean results, negative impact from the Australian dollar rates exchange movements much that's an…

Ben van Beurden

Management

Thanks Simon. So 2014 also was a pretty successful year for project delivery. Simon said we started up a number of new projects last year, including the large, operated developments in Deepwater, like Mars B in the Gulf of Mexico and Gumusut-Kakap in Malaysia. Looking into the next few years, in 2015 we’ll see the benefit of ramp-ups of these 2014 start-ups, although the headline production for 2015 will be lower than 2014 due to divestments that were also mentioned. There are going to be relatively few new start-ups in ‘15, and we should see a more fundamental growth in the ‘16 to ‘18 timeframe, as the next wave of large projects come on stream, with over 700,000 barrels per day of oil and gas and 7.5 million tons per annum of LNG currently under construction. We regularly benchmark our project delivery against the rest of the industry, for example using IPA. We know there have been problems with some non-operated projects, but I’m pretty comfortable with project delivery in the parts of the company that are under our direct control. Let’s talk a little bit about pre-FID opportunity set. So a decade ago, as you know the company frankly was short of investment opportunities, and that was after several years of under-investments. Made a lot of progress in addressing that, with higher investment levels in exploration, where we have had success for example in the Gulf of Mexico, but also the bolt-on deals such as Repsol LNG, and working on development-led opportunities like the ones we had in Chemicals, Iraq Upstream. And today, we are working through that enlarged opportunity set, to make sure that we have the right order in investment priorities. So investing in growth plays that have the returns and cash flow to ultimately of course…

Ben van Beurden

Management

Okay. Thank you, let me take the first and Simon will talk about the downstream. So what we have done and I think it's probably good that we expanded that a little bit more because I already sensed that there is a little bit of an explanation to do on how we treated the CapEx piece. So what we said we would take a few for three years that we have a decent amount of visibility on how phasing of projects and decision points would come up. And we basically wanted to balance the financial framework within the parameters that we thought were reasonable and it came out that we thought was an affordable capital level against staying within constraint that we have to set ourselves. We concluded that if you wanted to do that comparing that it's the amount of money that we could spend and options that we were developing and we were working on there was going to be a big mismatch. So the first thing we did is to just retire our postpone a large number of options about 40 projects of different sizes across the entire portfolio but clearly we could not see that we would go ahead under that sort of time-- under that financial framework. So that’s $15 billion, 40 projects and there are the likes of the Qatar chemicals project, [kitero] and there is a few others that’s in that. So that was one. That would leave us a certain amount of capital to spend, well, that’s really what we want to spend because if we do not spend if we seriously impair our capacity to grow the business. And of course we are here collectively driving shareholders value in the mid-term. So growth is important as well. And as I said…

Simon Henry

Management

The downstream question. $200 million was a self-help on costs, but the market and trading margin is also primarily self-help. It is, I think we spoke about a year-ago we changed both the organization and the way we are setting accountabilities particularly for the field’s value chain into the refinery to the customer. So we did a few things there, but primarily ownership of the full value chain cleared and managed an exactly that way. That has I think in my words unleashed and entrepreneurial spirit that was hidden, maybe even we thought lost within the downstream business. There is a quite different discussion today I can tell you with the leadership team as were the gathering bit bigger than this in Germany couple of weeks ago and they are talking figure just for them in the German, Swiss Austrian business, bigger than $200 million. So to come, significantly amount. And just to be clear the downstream is basically five businesses, retail, what we call global commercial which is lubricants and some of the commercial fuels and specialty products, chemicals and what is now trading and supply where we move most of the commercial fields both fields managed by the traders looking through the refinery as a value chain. We sell 6 million barrels a day, we only refined 3. That’s how that piece has managed. Each of those four is a $1 billion plus ratable business, trading is not a volatile business but it is ratable. Each of those $4 billion manufacture could also be a $1 billion, it’s not yet. That’s how it’s been made up, significant underlying sustainable improvement ordain the numbers that we can probably double what we have already done. Last time we what done needs to do targeting to do to get to that 10% sustainable bottom-end of the cycle.

Ashley Meyers

Management

Ashley Meyers of Viva Investors. Thanks for the presentation, Simon you said that you were planning to go ahead with drilling in the Arctic, should the payment come through. And I just wondered how I guess comfortable you felt with the economics from that given that we’ve thought 500 million barrels might be the minimum required to make that economic. But also on the risk perspective, both operational risk and reputational risk, as well, given there's still some outstanding issues on spill response and the report that came out last year.

Simon Henry

Management

You are right. I think it seems to be a big news of the day but of course we always maintained our capability to go back to Arctic when or to Alaska I should say, when the conditions would be right. We did not retire the entire armada of ships that we had and all the other elements of the supply chain. We have been upgrading our drill ship or both of them actually we have the rig that [indiscernible] navy brought in as well, all of that viewed if we should be ready to drill in the next season so that’s this summer. There is a number of conditions to fulfill assignment sets of first of all we have to make sure that we are ready from a logistics perspective and technical perspective. I think we will be. It would be incredibly disappointing if we have to conclude towards the end that after so many years of preparation and pauses, we would still have issues. So I think that will be fine. You need to have the permits, then we still have quite a few major permits outstanding, we're working very hard with the U.S. authorities to get those permits, but they need to be good permits and not going to accept permits that we cannot comply with, it's just something we had in 2012. And then thirdly, there are only few legal blocks that need to be removed as well, actually legal block against the department of the interior on the environmental impact assessment of the original lease sales. So needs to be resolved as well. Less control of course over the last piece, because that sits of course in the legal system, but the department is pretty confident that they will resolve it, we're working with them…

Ben van Beurden

Management

And probably nothing to answer, the economics will work if the structures are full of oil, as simple as that. The $4 billion of conventional exploration over 1 billion is what we will spend if we drill. At the moment as the meter is ticking, decision three four months from now at which point it will be close to 1 billion committed by then even if we do not drill, so the meter is ticking at quite a rate today. So that is important, but the $4 billion I talked about is on the assumption that we do drill.

Ashley Meyers

Management

[Indiscernible]

Ben van Beurden

Management

The no-go decision, what we call the ramp offs, if you get the meaning of the world we'll be there of course anytime, if there is another major legal block putting out, the we will not go ahead. If you get permits and workable, if you find a fatal flow in our preparations then it will all be no-go for the rest it will continue to go ahead. So it's basically monitoring do we still believe we're headed for, do we still have green lights? And then of course it will be a final moment pretty close to the season, just understand when is it ice-free when do we mobilize? How do we get out there et cetera? But basically just ramping up and preparing as if it's going to happen. It's just a matter of will we where we call it off rather than where we go ahead.

Theepan Jothilingam

Management

Theepan from Nomura. Just a couple of questions please. Firstly coming back to capital allocation, but could you talk about the process in terms of how you think about your reference conditions, if and when you would chose to change them? I think you're using $90 long-term and $4 on Henry hub. And then just as a reminder or recap of, I think the chart that you show on 2015 CapEx. How much committed CapEx is there in '16 and '17? And the second question was more along the lines; you talked about the Upstream engine being under pressure. Could you just elaborate as that decline rates integrity costs just a bit of color there would be great.

Ben van Beurden

Management

Simon can talk about the numbers for the years out in the bit more detail, probably in terms of when do we or how do we look at the rates the screening rates that we have. And when will it change? I think it will be very high to predict when or whether there will be a time when we change them, basically what we do is seek of course a very detailed modeling of the energy system of the whole project suite that we understand of basins, as a matter of fact the IEA believes that we have superior planning, modeling of forecasting capability than they have, all those jealous of the work the we do. But basically what we do is we look out to understand how demand will evolve. Of course we have an economics team to understand how economic growth and energy identity of GDP development will evolve and we have an understanding of how decline rates will manifest themselves given certain investments scenarios. Basically what you’re looking at if I simply the whole modeling story a little bit to looking at about 1% to 2% demand growth every year and GDP growth would have to certain drop down to 2% for oil demand to stay flat. So oil demand decline scenario is rather unlikely and certainly over the longer run. And if you look at existing assets with existing investment programs to arrest decline, you would still see a decline rate of 4%, 5% perhaps the year, spending a little bit on how much investments goes in there. So the more you see investments being pulled back for portability reasons or other reasons, the more because it doesn’t pay or whatever, the more you will see that decline accelerate. A very quickly if you look…

Theepan Jothilingam

Management

Thanks. We know we got a couple of occasion October, November. And at that point normally, you’re committed one year there 90%, two years 70%, three years 50%. Those numbers seem to hold true axiomatically. We didn't complete in October and November this year in fact still an ongoing dynamic process, what we’ve done is kept certain levels and allocation and it’s had the certain choices remain basically for them in terms of the big project, but crucially a lot more emphasis on taking cost back at post-FID activity and certainly have to pre-FID. If we look forward from today as less than 10% flexibility for this year absent significant changes in unit rate and what we’re actually building today that improves as we go forward. However some of those the larger FIDs they absorb significant demand of capital because those are big. So Appomattox, Vito, Canada LNG, [indiscernible] these are big projects that’s why we take some care because in and all themselves that you’re talking tens of billions of dollars out over 5 to 6 years investments period hence the reservation for the Chief Executive. [indiscernible] the multiple question earlier I think under pressure so is it caused, is it declined in integrity, is all of it but to be briefly honest tons way you are. Cost levels are very high in the North Sea we have assets going beyond design inside Southeast Asia. We have high decline rates in Denmark. It’s one all the other everywhere and they all come together over the past 2 to 3 years to make a significant reduction or dent in the free cash flow that’s available hence the choices that we need to make about fixed or go.

Martijn Rats

Management

I want to ask you few things, you’ve said about the dividends you expect the dividend of $0.47 this year, but it didn’t sound too committal I just wanted to make sure is that really still in place? The second thing I wanted to ask is with regards to the amount of unproductive capital, if I remember well from 203 annual reports 31% of capital employed was unproductive and I was wondering is that number now coming down because that’s sound quite high at the time. And the finally about exploration expenditure, I know to figure 4 billion, if you by the time we get 20F for 2014, the amount of exploration costs incurred that numbers that’s the number we can compare to other companies, what will that number be for 14 and what do you expect that number to be for 15?

Simon Henry

Management

Okay let me be clear about dividends and Simon will take the unproductive capital and aspects number, I think we have done nothing different than in previous years, but I saw that is $47 for the fourth quarter have an expectation of what first quarter 2015 dividend will be and then we have the track record for what happens after that. And there’s no change to that. On productive capital it grows as you invest comes off as you come on stream and it’s growing again we had deepwater come on stream, it was $42 billion end of the year work in progress and technically Kazakhstan is no longer or Kazakhstan is no longer work in progress because in practice it is because it came on then stopped. So, you can add another 6 or 7 for that. The $21 billion of it was a exploration asset signature bonus how ahead of development, are you talking over $65 billion which is purposely right in 30% in totality. Thanks. I don’t know I really don’t because we spend 4 million on conventional that’s the number that matters that’s the comparable of which last year close to a 1 billion was Alaska or outside it could be over 1 billion Alaska, it’s between 2.5 and 3 conventional this year. The rest of what get reported as ex-specs can be on last year it included lever by definition that’s exploration but that was an acquisition, it includes the activity on unconventional, which all intents and purposes, at the very least appraisal, and sometimes development, and sometimes development, but the rule say it’s exploration we’re not reporting. So, actually I neither know nor care whether that’s exploration, what it is? It’s $4 billion a year all spend in Shell and we’re not actually planning…

Simon Henry

Management

The divi, there’s a significant potential growth projects coming in, in 2 or 3 years’ time by which we expect the oil price to recovery. So I’ve breakeven price between now and then we don’t really know any more than I know the oil price, but it will depend on some of the choices we make but we’ve always said the breakeven price needs to be below the middle of our planning range which is 90 for now. So the breakeven cash price we’ve then assume the level of divestment and assume the level of investment because both of those affect us that will be below 90.

Fred Lucas

Management

[Question Inaudible]

Simon Henry

Management

Not necessarily for the next 2 years because of the [indiscernible] and we execute well. So three years out its below 90. We’ll depend on some of the choices we make in that interim period.

Fred Lucas

Management

[Question Inaudible]

Simon Henry

Management

You don’t know what the right choices are depending on the oil price it’s a dynamic situation we don’t run the machine by spreadsheet and we don’t run the machine according to a particular outcome at a particular point in time I’ve to tell the world how it is, not how we’d like it to be. We will make the choices that will enable us to maximum expense possible to protect the dividend and ensure we protect the growth profile to the extent we needed to remain the company that has won. On impairments, the big driver of impairment as your long term view, unless you’re doing only short term drilling. So, the long-term view and [indiscernible] we’ve not changed our long term view. Obviously, the short term view, we changed a little. So we retested anything that was of interest for three 3 years at a lower price. And then beyond around to 90, no problem. On Gorgon [Katchigan], a massive cash generators, at the end of the day. They're not lot high cost cash cost once they’re up and running. So both we’re not even close. Around $10 billion of assets that you said it stayed at 70 and you might have a question but actually no mostly cash assets in North America where the key decision is how we're going to monetize the gases into LNG or otherwise. So yes we did at a lower price but it was not close enough to warrant a further a deeper look at impairments. Now if we change the long-term investment criteria for sure that could be an impact and it could be broader than I have just stated but we don't yet see the fundamental supply demand cast to do so.

Unidentified Analyst

Management

And the questions coming on [indiscernible] on the OpEx, what proportion of the $45 billion is actually corporate overhead versus the direct operating costs? And the reason I say how much of the cost reduction is likely to be Shell-specific versus industry deflation in this environment? And then, for Ben, it's been just over a year that you have been in charge now. Just in terms of what has been more difficult than you expected as well as being better?

Simon Henry

Management

So the easy one is the first one are you thinking about the second one. [indiscernible] so the total overheads of $10.5 million is a good definition of overhead more specifically as I manage it or my two colleagues running HR, corporate, communications, real-estate, legal, et cetera or they manage it. That has already been rundown from maximum it is the light we target over the next year or two of the more aggressive sustainable cost reductions. We have already taken quite out a lot of cost out over several years in a pretty sustainable way at the asset level which is being offset by two things new assets and increasing level of integrity and maintenance spent and no mature upstream assets that really does show through in the OpEx quite material. The target the $10.5 billion just in IT alone we took 300 out against expectation last year and that's just the start of a quite a bigger program, I have actually the same number in site and finance. So every piece of the organization knows where they need to get to. It's not a single year program, we don't give a headline number because that a gets us to much into chest beating and driving the wrong behavior in the company. We found that individual executives is sustainable through cycle but given the oil price is 50, do it more quickly, sense of urgency and really importantly third party costs because there is a window to take out that third party cost. I hope that has given you enough time.

Ben van Beurden

Management

Just been thinking of it.

Simon Henry

Management

Not it hasn't, there is a long list of things that I could come at. It has been a very dynamic year and it's of course little bit sort of difficult to maintain objectivity if you are right in the middle of it and look back and say well actually it wasn't just felt like that but I feel has been quite a dynamic year lot of things happening. If you remember a year ago wasn't exactly the easy moment to spend here I think during the year we have seen a lot of good things happen but it took a lot of time enough. This is the last company it's a complex portfolio to work with bringing a much more sort of centralized early view to capital planning and that's required for the systems in place that just don't come overnight. And I think what has been working very well is the way how the company has responded. It always takes time to explain what you mean with performance units and how capital discipline in reality gets implemented. It's very, very important that again you do not create an overreaction when we talk about capital discipline we don't have the message in the company there is no capital anymore so it's okay to cut everything and let's send people home et cetera, et cetera. So getting the balance right is a thing quite a challenge as well. At the end of the year indeed we're confident, we have a long-term view, we want to be prudent, we don’t want to overreact et cetera, et cetera but it is nevertheless a significant challenge to navigate with this uncertainty in a way what you hear to say is we're not going to have a fire and forget plan where you just say here is your capital good luck with it. We have to work through the year to see that we're still doing the right things, that we're sufficiently prudent but also sufficiently preserving our growth opportunities. So but I find all that dynamic is stimulating, I get a lot of energy out of it as well. I think maybe and I don't want to flippant here but standing in front of you I am meeting with our investors I find that quite a new experience as well. And that only because of the experience of standing on a stage and talking about the company but I think it gives them the cleared sense of accountability. It is very, very clear that buck stops with me, sure that sounds and feels that in his in own way as well. But I still very, very much feed on the [indiscernible] and I feel that to be a very healthy thing as well. So there is a strong -- even stronger sense of personal commitment than I thought I would have when I came into the role. Does that help, okay. sorry I promised you would come next.

Oswald Clint

Management

Thank you. Also Oswald Clint at Sanford Bernstein. Just a question on LNG could you talk about the resilience of your LNG earnings today or at least a next year or so at these oil prices but also even you said you are good at LNG you like gas and if the backend of forward curve is that seven day and you breakeven at seven day. How does that play into your decision making for future LNG projects as part of shell. And also what do you think about the current LNG price and its ability to prevent or delay some of big North American projects overall which could have created the risk to the global LNG market anyway. And then secondly just on your divestment target 5 to 6 and potentially less this year. Could you drop more assets into your MLP if required, if things get tough is that something you have included in that number of could you think about it?

Ben van Beurden

Management

Let me talk about the just second question and Simon will take a first. Without wanting to say too much about MLP, I think the idea is clear. This is a very, very quick and efficient vehicle to liberate some of the capital on the balance sheet, to get cash for it, get the just a portion of the solution wise if we go ahead with the further dropdown, so this despite of the bigger longer-term program to of course take the most of this opportunity. Quickly accelerate is I am sure that we will be looking at optimizing the timing from a number of angles, but we can also look at other structures that we have MLP like structures that will help us structuring the finances of the company. And that maybe more opportunity to do of course at a time that we really need to understand the financial framework can be optimized. On LNG, talk about pricing and prospects in North America.

Simon Henry

Management

And might be little bit of resilience of the earnings, November 30% 40% what you say an integrated gas was actually gas to liquid primarily in Qatar and a little bit in Malaysia. So that’s almost directly exposed but in the production sharing environment, we have some effective hedge against the lower oil price within the production sharing environment, the rest of LNG is either big which is low cash cost it’s not for investing but in terms of operate is relatively low cash cost it’s pretty resilient in cash generation that might lower LNG prices than we see today, but building new ones is a much bigger question now. At $70 very few current LNG projects make a lot of sense as simply because the cost today reflect more 110 environment in the 70. So the cost just be higher wither it’s in East Africa, Australia or North America, this push to change long-term pricing of cargos from oil price linked to Henry Hub price linked doesn’t seem a strong when actually not means fuel prices, oil price link cargos are cheaper than Henry have linked and the housing gas being a single Henry Hug cargo delivered. The first ones drill come this year there is still only really one project on its way and that comes on streams to be in past. So we will see how that develops. It’s been a good reminder to the customers over the past six months that oil price and linkage upside them as well as downside. So we expect to see the mix change but it won’t move all this part, it won’t move oil hub and it won’t oil to Henry hub. And so the resilience and the attractiveness of gas as a fuel from most of those consuming companies and states and utilities remained pay enough to support we think of our resilience business even at 70, but it will not support a lot at new investment which will make those of us who have molecules today much better placed.

Thomas Adolff

Management

Thomas Adolff from Credit Suisse. Two questions please. One on your gearing and credit rating if anything. Your target is 0% to 30% and on the last conference call you said if you get to 20% rating will open the door because all the off balance sheet financial leases et cetera et cetera. I wondered my question is how important is your credit rating if for example we get into an environment where the interesting opportunities for your upstream business. The second question actually I wanted to go back to the LNG business because if I look at your 4Q results I was a little bit surprised by the sequential decline given that oil link got a lag effect, West Coast and your exposure to spot market is relatively low. So if you can talk around the resilience in the LNG earnings perhaps in a $50 oil price environment.

Simon Henry

Management

I can quickly do the second. So what you saw in the integrated gas results indeed is a decline we have to bear in mind but half a billion of that is actually just the oil price exposure that we had total GTL and then the 330 million that Simon mentioned that was the 4x effect on the deferred tax assets in Australia actually all sets in integrated gas because we consider Australian integrated gas business. So add back $800 million and all of the sudden you see that it’s not a decline.

Ben van Beurden

Management

Gearing, 0 to 30 where you can see the rating agencies also do look at pension fund liability operating leases commitment, et cetera. So they add $20 billion to $30 billion on to what you can see. They're also both just significant; S&P have done it twice, maybe three times reduce their projections on which they use pricing to calculate their ratios on a go forward basis. And that has put the entire industry on negative watch with S&P, and Moody's hasn't yet moved but it would not be illogical for them to do the same based on the changes to the environment. And whatever we do in terms of opportunities that are out there, we like the rating to start with an A maybe not beyond that but it will be A, because that is important both in terms of access to the market when you need it, the price is so doing but the confidence it projects with the partners we work with around the world many of whom, but when you say why aren't you slashing and burning CapEx? One of the reasons we're not is because a lot of our partners work with us precisely because they don't expect us to do it. So we said Petrobras on Libra. Sorry we can't join in, we have no money. That is not going to help us in Brazil or China or elsewhere in the world, so that credit rating is a defector indication of confidence through cyclability to finish what we started and that's why it's important. But the rating agencies are a bit nervous at the moment, not in [hurry]. So we would not be surprised to see the downgrade if we don't do anything differently.

Richard Griffith

Management

Richard Griffith from Canaccord. Just a couple of quick questions. You talk about your long-term oil price assumption being somewhere between 70 and above. And yet the markets have come down to 50. Does that mean your view on M&A changes or it that too early to say? And the second one was just on U.S. shale, what do you think the breakeven for U.S. Shale is going right now? And how that plays into the planning scenario as you've talked about earlier when you modeled out on the forecasting.

Ben van Beurden

Management

I think on M&A we never comment, so I don’t think this is the right moment to start changing that policy if you don't mind. And what we do see by the way is that in some cases partners that we work with in projects or an exploration benches are a bit more pressurized of course than we're. So as opportunities come to this all the time. On the Shell breakeven, I think it's a bit of a mixed picture, I am sure Simon will have a little bit more to say about that as well. if you talk about our own breakeven prices probably a little bit too early to say, remember that lot of the positions that we have are still very immature. So we're working out, how we will bring them into development and we'll have to just see what's the development cost will be. After we also know what we can take out of at a contractor universe that is going to help us there. And then how that plays into what then will be WTI environment. It's obvious of course that with the low prices that we have at the moment, a lot of the opportunities to invest will look less attractive, and therefore you will quite a bit of the flexibility that we have, capital program has been exercised in the resources plays and the shale plays. But also because it's a little bit more flexible, so everything that you respond to spend in resources, plays in North America, there is a fair chance that you can catch up later of you can do it later. As well in the deepwater project license or project where you are in a slightly different position with partners it is basically go ahead n lose it. So…

Jon Rigby

Management

Can I preface this question by saying, if you recognize the $50 if you roll going for Q4 upstream performance you’re going to be close to breakeven if not lost making even paying is that something as somewhat of a close to thought, add a little back my model, we chose go back our long way and I couldn’t find another quarter losing like that and that sort of promised me to think about something I think we and the markets going to want focus on which is trying established through cycle what you’re capable of doing, you’ve talked about the dividend at 90 and that because we’re jumping but do you have over $200 billion of invested capital, so is there some limit to the performance expectation from a company as large and sophisticated as yourselves to be generating a 6% return on invested capital, it does seem somewhat meager. If it’s not and you’re invested investment performance on assets is a lot better and obviously you think it is what’s the gap why is the return to shareholder some much lower? That was one question. This is right through New York. The second question is just going back to your discussion around OpEx and I think you’ve also talked about how you’ve spoken to your suppliers and you’re asking for cost cut and so on and so with the experience 08 and 09 what the sort of leverage on your OpEx that comes from the discussion which I believe are quite big one around cost cutting that follows into that $40 odd billion of OpEx, can you just sort of clarify that so I can kind of follow the potential there? Thanks.

Ben van Beurden

Management

Let me talk a little bit about the second question, Simon, if you take the first and then I also suggest by the way that you talk to Harry Brekelmans, who is sitting there in back who is new P&T director and took over from Matthias Bichsel a few months ago and hold contract again procurement outfit actually sits under Harry. Of course the first time we decide see the oil price coming off. You saw the opportunities coming up as well and actually said John, we did exactly what we’re doing now also then 08 or 09 timeframe where we basically been back. Our partners and supply team and listen we cannot go on this as if nothing has happened. No, this is usual, we have to see very very significant reductions in rates, very significant cost take out in your side as well. All the letters have gone out again asking and suggesting 25% cuts in rate. And are going to be approach as if sitting down will our key suppliers to just see how we’re going to do this. And it’s a big early days to say where we are going to run that, but this scaling has to be and multibillion dollar takeout program certainly if you have a longer term period of lower price. You talked about a year at 50. I can only imagine the amount of speck actually we will have in the system, if you have a year 14 and it expands into 16. So and of course if it’s goes on at a relatively low level for multiple years, we will have to see a reset in the industry a rest in the spending. We quick make similar sort of return of course as much lower oil prices as well but…

Jon Rigby

Management

[Question Inaudible]

Ben van Beurden

Management

Yes and we do and you can imagine that acquired a few very difficult fiscal environment we’re having pretty tough discussion at the momentum because there have been many areas and if you don’t mind, I am not going to go public on that. But in many areas, you can probably figure them out yourselves, either because it has been done very publicly or has been done privately but it’s known of course layers of fiscals have been layered on old layers and we’re at a point that is sort of okay at $110 but not more than okay but it was pretty seek at the environment that we’re seeing at a moment much of that is in our engines business and material businesses but of course government would look at profits that we’re making on a relatively mature asset base and say we’re hold on that we need to talk about sharing this and of course additional tax structures were being slapped on that need to be peeled off otherwise we cannot carry on. So we’ve quite a few cases where we just say listen, this infill project is just not going to work we’ve to talk about how we’re going to change this otherwise we’ll not do it, we’ll be mobilize risk and in the end what you’ll see is your fiscal environment that actually kill yourself. It will basically drive down income so we’ve to have a different discussion and indeed when it is with heads of state it is a discussion that I had but believe me we’re having this full on. So there is a question on that returns on invested capital as well which I must have some of the new ones in the question so just give it, I’ll say what I want to say and -- .

Simon Henry

Management

6% on $200 billion is not acceptable overall clearly, it was 10% on that return clean underlying basis last year that if you look at the track record competitively is in improving competitive position. We acknowledge a lot of that 200 billion is a result of 10 to 15 years ago of not having the longevity in the portfolio and us lifting investment before the competition. They’ve lifted their investment to catch up, the other factor is you get half as much per dollar investment as you did 10 years ago. So the actual unit rate in investment is doubled what it was, if it stays double then it will be difficult to achieve the same return on capital as a $50 to $60 oil prices we did 10 to 15 years ago that’s not going to happen again but we also don’t think a $50 oil price is going to happen again for any significant length of time relative to our investment lifecycle. So improvement come from eventually it will be probably a quarter of the capital at the end of the year that’s going to be a double digit return that needs to be must be a double digit return to 65 billion of non-productive capital we didn’t have to take that – and that’s partly we’ve done some investment part to bringing it on stream and we’ve to take cost across everything. All of those levers pull together on the return on capital I think few basis here, few basis points there, there is no quick fix. We can’t move your capital base $200 million overnight but 6% is not acceptable, it has to be double digit or more through cycle really to be competitive with our competitors but with investors other choices. Q –Iain Reid: Ben…

Ben van Beurden

Management

Your first question I’m not sure whether I complete got what you were going at $15 billion set we have to third as you mean that or? Yes I don’t think we had a V-shaped recovery in mind for that, I don’t want to go exactly into where we model that but basically what we did we looked on for a number of price scenarios that we had a number of categories of investments that we’d be looking at in terms of attractiveness, do ability et cetera et cetera and we came to the conclusion that under almost all negative scenarios that would be a significant tail that we would not want to do or would want to start deferring and then we had a significant amount of capital left as you can imagine that we would point to do even on the relatively sort of bleak lower oil price scenarios is a bit of fuzzy line of course between that and at some point in time we’ve to just say well do ability aspects coming to being precisely for the reason that you mentioned. In some cases easier to defer a project because it is a little bit more under our control, all we know that our partner says well okay, I don’t mind dropping that one but the outlook that we have at the moment. And that’s how we made that first segregation. So some of them are pretty much gone. The Qatar Chemicals project, you may have to take an FID decision you decide not to of course it's some point in time the question will come back again and say well that’s a different type of outlook could we reconsider that and the feedstock hasn't gone away and the market has gone away, so we could reconsider that but for now it's not just off the table, we're not recycling it. So it has been a relatively precise exercise to single out these 40 projects and to put into one side. If there would be a very sharp V-shaped recovery yes we could of course consider bringing them. But I hope you get the sense from the way I work with the numbers the fact that after deferring or cancelling $15 billion worth projects you still have a project suite left which is of course is a high graded project suite, we still would have to spend the same amount of capital next year as rather this year than last year. I hope you will get the impression of how rich our funnel actually is. So bringing it all back it's never going to be completely compatible sort of balancing of return and growth that we were talking about. So you always come to do a little bit of pamperization and proving there is just going to be a whole lot more of it of course with the oil price being where it is. So we've clarified at it.

Simon Henry

Management

$3.3 billion is a $10 price movement sensitivity on those earnings on cash flow if sustained for a year. And actually in fact the other change is that increases over the coming years because our oil price sensitivity grows, new production is more sensitive than old production and there is more of it when we get the next wave of projects [indiscernible] they are all oil price direct sensitive and most tax royalty regimes, is there mitigation? Yes well we probably covered some of it especially regimes. There is some protection already 27% of the production including F&R, is a production sharing contract. So it's on low end. That figure I gave you is roughly the linearity within the 1,710 range we're outsider probably already the range of linearity. And there are the mitigations really at cost management the fiscal discussions we talked about and the trading capability. So we don’t entirely get caught on the way down. We have very strong commodity trading position and our ability to take advantage of volatility is some protection to mitigate the low price environment in both gas and oil.

Ben van Beurden

Management

Okay I suggest we take the last question from you and then there is of course plenty of plan for more dialogue as we go out and have a drink together but I think you probably or certainly I could do with a slight break in a slightly different environment. Why don't you take the next question.

Simon Henry

Management

Yes the last question.

Anish Kapadia

Management

Sure it's Anish Kapadia from Tudor, Pickering. Three questions, please. The first one was seeing that you have got a long-term oil price assumption of $90 just thinking about capital allocation for the longer term because we're seeing a lot change like over the fast years in terms of the breakeven of the U.S unconventional plays come down dramatically and that's without probably a further 20% fall in service cost in the U.S. And then looking at the U.S unconventional plays versus say Deepwater and that seems is onshore is lower risk in terms of geology, longer resources life and lower fiscal risk as well compared with the big operational risk that you take on from offshore project not necessarily a better breakeven. So I am just wondering how do you think about over the longer-term over the longer term due to intend to put a lot more capital employed into U.S unconventional. And then the second question is just to try and understand cash flow movements on an underlying basis in 2015. So you have had some kind of one-off benefits in 2014 from the likes of working capital from Majnoon cash flow. Just if you were in a kind of flat oil price scenario into 2015 and taking into account the disposals et cetera, how would you expect cash flow to move year-over-year given all those kind of one-off effects?

Ben van Beurden

Management

You want to take the second one. Yeah I think it's -- to some extent I think it's impossible to compare the two. So if you perhaps fundamentally different characteristics and if you indeed look at an unconventional position yeah of course you could it's sort of lower risk and turns of the investment that you make one well at a time maybe look at more productablity as well. But typically also it is there is a smaller margin to play with. So it is more flexible, it's more writable and it needs more -- it needs continuous CapEx injection in order to keep it going. And what we're looking at is much more a game of we have an existing asset on the balance sheet, four of them in North America together, $20 billion risk capital employed. How much more capital do we want to put on top of that in order to bring it into productive use. And we can play around for that a little bit. An Appomattox project is a multibillion dollar investment we have to take it in one go you cannot say I will let one well at a time or one piece of cake at a time. So therefore you have to take a big sallow and have to prepare yourself to indeed see that true. But once it an operation you have completely different cash flow profile, very, very high cash margins because it takes relatively little to keep it in operation, of course has incredibly higher productive yield compared to what you see in unconventional field. So you have to have a little bit of ball in order to mix and match the financial profiles as you want to have in your portfolio. You cannot, unless you are a mid-sized E&P company in the U.S., you cannot just say well I will just have unconventional portfolio we have to mix it then we have to understand how much we want to have in a different buckets and when the moment is out to bite up the big thing to chew when the moment is to nibble a bit on the unconventional space. So as more done sort of simply economic consideration coming into it.

Simon Henry

Management

The cash flow, good question. I’m not sure if flat oil price at 50 or 110 you are thinking but we are at still a 110 relative to 214 we would be seeing those turnarounds make a quite a big difference in probably offsetting the benefits of full ramp up of the project we have seen. We don’t have a lot of big new projects coming on stream in 2015 obviously a lower oil price that impact is exaggerated in terms of absolute impact in terms of relative impact is better to be down in gas oil $50 and the 100 in terms of the value of the molecules in the Granby. So let’s give a straight answer as well because and we expect divestments to be low, much lower, but low, on an absolute sense. We took five recycles to six recycles we will do well to get to 5 or 6 in the current environment I think. So is going to be a lower than that, which effectively may add $10 for the equivalent breakeven. We have -- a year ago we took the strict option away from the dividend potentially you look at reintroducing it remember one reason we took it away was constrains around the buyback in the Dutch fiscal system to bring it back this year. We can remove some of the constraints et cetera. So we believe the works on a few dollars a barrel or $10 a barrel breakeven equivalent, but is going to be a tough year. No question. We are going to the first six months there are few drivers of the price backup on the fundamental, maybe it play that better in the second half of the year and that’s what we need to be preparing for. Suddenly we will in the 40s the cash generation it may not even be in the first season. The divestments will be lower that’s why we need to be pretty tight on every little we have to ensure that we end 2015 and is good position as possible wherever the oil price is. And that’s a Board level discussion I quoted ongoing including yesterday. It’s not any single.