![Shell may be looking at renewables investments in Australia.
\](/content/dam/images/g/r/r/k/6/l/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gu4kg1.png/1486100687078.jpg)
Royal Dutch Shell has revealed it is considering opportunities in Australia to combine gas and renewable energy to support what chief executive Ben van Beurden says is an "unstoppable" transition to a cleaner economy.
Mr van Beurden pointed to many areas where the combination of gas and renewables made "a lot of sense", without elaborating on the types of investments or deals that might result from the strategy.
Speaking after the release of the December quarter results overnight Australian time, chief financial officer Simon Henry singled out Australia, Oman and Brunei as locations where Shell was advancing its "gas-plus-renewables" strategy and examining opportunities.
The news came as the oil giant announced its most senior executive in the local market, country chair Andrew Smith, had been promoted to head Shell's global trading and shipping business out of London.
Mr Smith, who started with Shell as a refinery engineer in Geelong in 1986 and had led Shell in Australia for almost four years, would be replaced by former Rio Tinto executive Zoe Yujnovich, an Australian citizen who, until recently, had been Shell's executive vice president of Oil Sands based in Canada.
Shell last year created a separate New Energies division to invest in renewable and low-carbon power, including biofuels, hydrogen and wind power, and last month led a consortium that won the right to build a 700 megawatt wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands.
Spectacular growth
Another oil major France's Total SA has made major investments in solar power and batteries, while Denmark's Dong Energy is now the biggest player in offshore wind and this week announced it would become the first major European energy company to commit to becoming entirely coal-free in power generation by 2023.
Mr van Beurden said in London that Shell expected the "new energy" area would "grow quite spectacularly" from a small base, alongside increasing demand for oil and gas. Shell would shift its mix of investment to suit.
The move into cleaner forms of energy would position Shell to benefit from the transformation taking place in energy because of the fight against climate change.
"We believe we are in the middle of an energy transition that is unstoppable and we want to be at the vanguard of that, we want to be a beneficiary of that energy transition rather than playing a defensive rearguard action role," Mr van Beurden said.
Uniquely placed
He noted that "an integrated offering of gas and renewables" could not just deal with the problem of intermittent generation from the sun and wind, but "give that second leg that a growing economy needs". Shell, with its deep portfolio of gas, was "uniquely placed" to offer that combination to customers, he said.
Mr Smith's time in charge of Shell Australia coincided with the biggest acquisition of recent years in the oil industry, when Shell bought BG for £47 billion ($76.9 billion) in 2015.
That deal had a significant focus on Australia, bringing BG's Queensland Curtis LNG project in Gladstone under the same roof as Shell's 50 per cent stake in the Arrow Energy joint venture.
Mr Smith had been outspoken against onshore gas moratoriums in NSW and Victoria during his time in the role.
Shell still owned 13 per cent of Woodside Petroleum, an interest that was expected to be sold in the $US30 billion of divestments Mr van Beurden was targeting for 2016-18.