News & Media releases

Greater Gorgon venture moves into feed key Shell project reaches major milestone

01/07/2005

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies today welcomed the decision by the Greater Gorgon joint venturers to move the project into the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) phase as another major milestone for one of the Group's key international projects, and a further highpoint in developing Western Australia's vast gas reserves.

Shell Gas & Power Executive Vice President, Asia Pacific, Peter de Wit commented: 'Gorgon is a key global project for Shell. Shell has already secured capacity in the Energia Costa Azul LNG terminal in Baja California, Mexico, which will give access to markets in North America for LNG from Gorgon.'
Shell is the market leader in LNG in the Asia Pacific region, and the Gorgon Project ranks alongside Sakhalin II as one of the region's and the world's major new LNG supply sources.

Mr de Wit continued:  'The joint venture partners - Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil - would continue to utilize all their LNG expertise and strong operational performance to improve the economic competitiveness of the Greater Gorgon project.'

He congratulated the Kellogg Joint Venture, JP Kenny and Technip on winning the FEED contracts, and said that with strong Governmental and public support, the Project was on target to deliver first gas in 2010. 
Shell LNG sales grew by 15per cent in the first quarter of 2005 and the Gas & Power business has enjoyed a number of successes in the region over the past six months. These have included:

• The final investment decision on a fifth LNG liquefaction train taken by Shell and its joint venture partners in the North West Shelf Project.
• Shell's selection by Queensland's Stanwell Corporation as the preferred coal gasification technology provider for a proposed coal gasification power project in Australia.
• Three separate agreements signed between the Shell-partnered Sakhalin II Project and three Japanese utilities Toho Gas Company Ltd, Tohoku Electric, and Hiroshima Gas Co Ltd, bringing total gas sales in the project to 7.3 mtpa (representing over 75per cent of total plant capacity from the first two trains).

Notes to Editors

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies,  "the Group", is a diverse group of energy companies with operations in around 145 countries. The Group's businesses include oil and gas exploration and production; power generation; manufacturing, marketing and shipping of oil products and chemicals and renewable energy projects including wind and solar power. The Group's parent companies are Royal Dutch Petroleum Company which has a 60% interest in the Group and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company plc which has a 40% interest in the Group. Shares in the parent companies are traded on stock exchanges in Europe and the US. On 28 October 2004 Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport and Trading announced proposals for their unification under a single company, Royal Dutch Shell plc, with one Board of Directors. For further information, visit www.shell.com.

Disclaimer statement
This announcement contains forward-looking statements, that are subject to risk factors associated with the oil, gas, power, chemicals and renewables business. It is believed that the expectations reflected in these statements are reasonable, but may be affected by a variety of variables which could cause actual results, trends or reserves replacement to differ materially, including, but not limited to: price fluctuations, actual demand, currency fluctuations, drilling and production results, reserve estimates, loss of market, industry competition, environmental risks, physical risk, risks associated with the identification of suitable potential acquisition properties and targets and the successful negotiation and consummation of transactions, the risk of doing business in developing countries, legislative, fiscal and regulatory developments including potential litigation and regulatory effects arising from recategorisation of reserves, economic and financial market conditions in various countries and regions, political risks, project delay or advancement, approvals and cost estimates.
 

Please refer to the Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2004 (as amended) for a description of certain important factors, risks and uncertainties that may affect the Companies' businesses.  Neither of the Companies undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, whether to reflect new information, future events or otherwise.
 

Cautionary Note to US Investors:
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission ('SEC') permits oil and gas companies, in their filings with the SEC, to disclose only proved reserves that a company has demonstrated by actual production or conclusive formation tests to be economically and legally producible under existing economic and operating conditions.  We use certain terms in this presentation, such as "expected producible resources" and "amount of reserves we expect to produce", that the SEC's guidelines strictly prohibit us from including in filings with the SEC.