Shell Announced Fourth Downgrade of Oil Reserves

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBHQB4KMUD.html

LONDON (AP) - The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. downgraded the size of its proven oil and gas reserves Monday for the fourth time this year.

The company, which stunned shareholders in January when it announced its confirmed oil and gas holdings were 20 percent, or 3.9 billion barrels, smaller than it had claimed, said that it was downgrading 103 million additional barrels from "proven" to less certain categories.

It blamed the change on accounting change involving "royalties paid in cash in Canada."

more

[Minstrel Boy]

1. whoops!

The "proven reserve" books have been cooked worse than Enron's. The only question is, when will the oil crunch make an impression on the general public.

Have no clue what the reasoning means: "royalties paid in cash in Canada". Huh?

[BeFree]

3. Royalties

The deal goes something like this:

You ask me to estimate how much oil you have, and we agree that you get 10 cents for every gallon I pump. So, I say, "Hey, you've got 10 million gallons", now my competitor says you have just half that. Which guy are you gonna make the deal with?

Royal Dutch made a Royal mistake but it ain't the Royal's who'll Shell out the bucks for that *&%# up.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. But how did you like the play?

"Did I say we had enough oil to last 10,000 years? I really meant to say we had enough oil to last 3 weeks. Sorry -- my bad!"

--bkl

[Turbineguy]

4. RD stock is up 31 cents.

[jmcgowanjm]

5. Whoops-Shell Canada CEO confident in her firm's reserves

Reuters
Friday April 30, 4:54 pm ET
By Jeffrey Jones

Shell Canada, known for its national gas station chain and
newly started Alberta oil sands project, has its own
executives and directors and has not been implicated in
the scandal, although it cut its estimate of natural gas at
the Sable gas project off Nova Scotia at the end of last year.

Cook said she is confident Shell Canada's procedures
for determining and auditing reserves are "robust." They
include annual reviews of each well and field by an in-
house staff of 29 evaluators and auditing of processes by
a board committee.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040430/energy_shellcanada_reserves_1.html