Extreme weather in Texas during February was expected to hit Royal Dutch Shell’s first-quarter adjusted earnings by up to $200m, the oil giant said on Wednesday.
The company also forecast refined oil product sales at between 3.7m – 4.7m barrels per day (bpd) for the first quarter as it issued an update ahead of first-quarter results due on April 29. The snowstorms in Texas, which disabled the state’s energy grid, were expected to have shrunk output by 10,000 – 20,000 bpd.
Natural gas production of 920,000 – 960,000 oil-equivalent bpd was expected for the period, combined with liquefied natural gas volumes of 7.8m – 8.4m metric tons in its trading business, where Shell said it expected results to be “significantly below average”.
For the upstream business, production is expected at 2.4m – 2.475m oil-equivalent bpd.
