Royal Dutch Shell is more than two thirds of the way through its $30billion divestment plan, according to oil market analysts.
The supermajor is said to have shed around $20billion of assets since taking over BG Group early last year.
The huge sell-off includes its undeveloped oil tar sands investment in Canada, worth more than $7billion as well as its $3.8billion North Sea deal with Chrysaor made at the start of 2017.
Other billion dollar deals include the Motiva refinery break off to Saudi Aramco, the 32% interest released in Showa Shell and the sale of non core Western Canada shale acerage.
A host of other sub-billion dollar deals brings the total due to around the $20billion mark, although not all of it will be direct cash flow.
Iain Armstrong, divisional director at investment management firm Brewin Dolphin, said it was a strong start for the divestment plan and that he expects Shell to reach its goal.
However he expects upstream sales to conclude shortly, with the remaining $10billion coming from the offloading of mid and downstream assets.
Armstrong said: “I’m very confident that they will get to the $30billion by the end of 2018.
“Premier Oil finally sold its $66million Pakistan assets and it took them nearly two years to do that.
“Meanwhile Shell has been knocking them out left, right and centre since before the BG deal.”
He added: “You don’t really want to be getting rid of too many more upstream assets.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if another $1billion to $2billion worth of divestment gets announced over the summer, so that takes Shell closer to $23billion.
“That gives them another 18 months to make up the remaining $7billion.”
Armstrong said Shell is likely to hang onto US shale resources with a possible surge in activity on the cards.
But less politically stable regions could be fire-sale options.
One region in particular is Nigeria, where tensions are running high with militant rebel groups around the Niger Delta.
Pulling out of the African nation could enable Shell to focus elsewhere, such as the west of Shetland blocks the company bought up around Hurricane Energy’s Greater Lancaster Area amid speculation of a billion barrel find.
He added: “If Shell found that the blocks around Hurricane’s find were looking good then I wouldn’t be surprised if someone [at Shell] didn’t say, ‘we don’t need this political hassle with the likes of Nigeria’.
“That’s a possibility, but it’s probably post 2018.
“I think the focus will be midstream and getting out of non-core downstream markets.”
Other small sell-offs could include refineries and other joint venture operations.
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