Shell boss: Jeroen van der Veer
Shell sticks by oil sands play
Shell boss Jeroen van der Veer said the Anglo-Dutch supermajor remains committed to investing in Canadian oil sands, despite putting the expansion of the second phase of the Athabasca project in Alberta on hold.
He said: “Looking at the long-term energy agenda, the Canadian oil sands will be exploited.
“And we will continue to expand, though we have postponed the expansion for now,” he added.
At the end of October last year, the company said it was pressing ahead with the first phase expansion at Athabasca, while putting further investment there on hold because of mounting local construction costs, a Bloomberg report said.
Van der Veer said even under the current market circumstances the company will continue to be a “relatively large investor.”
Cutting or stopping investing would be “highly undesirable. We have made that mistake before and we learned a lesson from it”, Van der Veer said, referring to the late 1990s when crude prices collapsed and oil companies curtailed spending.
Van der Veer said he is urging colleagues to control costs.