His view contrasts with the experience of his predecessor Peter Voser, who listed Shell’s failed huge “bet” on US shale as his biggest regret in the job, with the oil major writing off more than $2 billion from its North American shale assets in 2013.
In an interview with The Australian while in Sydney for B20 conference yesterday, Van Beurden said he believed the US shale-oil boom was in the early stages of the revolution.
“The amount of innovation the industry has put there is actually quite limited,” he told the newspaper.
“I think we are still at an early part of the technology curve and therefore there is much more to come in terms of productivity and cost take-out and novel ways of doing it.”
The CEO expects shale-oil production to grow even faster if there are export dollars to be made.
“There are some questions around whether the US government will lift the ban on exporting crude but probably when they do so it will enable even more production to come on,” Van Beurden reportedly said.
“The trend that the US is going to be closer to self-sufficiency rather than a big importer is a very strong and more enduring trend than a lot of observers like to believe.”
He reportedly ruled out any big impacts from a US shale-driven LNG exports on Australia’s LNG scene due to gas demand expected in the next few decades.
