UK oil major Shell posted its weakest quarterly profit in nearly half a decade on Thursday, sending its New York-listed shares down 5.3%.
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Shell and BP shares rose roughly 3% on Thursday, while US majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron were more muted, up 1.1% and 0.6% respectively.
Rather than jockeying for an advantage in their weakened state, the two longtime rivals are set to work together more and more.
A megamerger of this sort would vault Shell’s market cap closer to ExxonMobil’s $468 billion and likely beyond Chevron’s $248 billion.
Shell managed to overturn a Dutch legal order made in 2021 that had mandated the company cut its emissions 45% from 2019 levels by 2030.
Last week the Big Oil companies weighed in with their earnings reports, and it was mostly a pretty sorry assembly.
Shell has started to shop around for buyers to offload its stake in an offshore wind project off the coast of Scotland.
Shell is hitting pause on a major biofuel project in the Netherlands, one of the biggest in Europe, to consider market conditions.