My wife and I enjoyed spending the long weekend at Napa Valley to taste California wine with our kids. I hope all the Americas out there had a relaxing Labor Day weekend as well!
And congratulations to Kelsey Vanderschoot, our "editor-in-chief" for Well Read and AAPG’s other newsletters, for getting married last weekend!
Now, let’s get to two interesting energy news bytes.
Shangyou Nie
Editor, Well Read
Shell Will Cut 20 percent of Staff From its E&P Divisions
Robson90/Shutterstock.com
Media reported last week that Shell is in the process of cutting 20 percent of staff in its exploration, strategy, and field development departments. This is part of CEO Wael Sawan’s continued focus on performance and cost cutting.
Job cuts will include “technical professionals who originate and mature oil and gas opportunities.”
Shell’s latest re-organization will most strongly impact staff in two divisions in Houston and The Hague. The London office will also be affected to a lesser extent, according to the Financial Times.
No details on the exact number of job cuts or the timeline of the reorganization have been released.
What’s driving the cuts:
Sawan promised to cut operating costs by up to $3 billion after he took Shell’s helm in January 2023. Last year, Shell’s OpEx totaled $40 billion.
In early August, Sawan told analysts that the company has delivered $1.7 billion in OpEx savings thus far, according to the Financial Times.
Join AAPG Academy and Forvis Mazars on 10 September at 12pm CDT (UTC-5) to hear from experts Geoffrey Thyne of ESal and Cesar Vivas of the Geothermal Consortium at the University of Oklahoma, to learn how they successfully managed their contract and achieved technical success. Plus, hear from Evan Masters of Forvis Mazars about how you can outsource the tricky documentation and compliance pieces and better respond to funding opportunities in the future.
TotalEnergies Will Spend $100 Million to Acquire Carbon Credits in the USA
Wasanajai/Shutterstock.com
On 30 August, TotalEnergies announced that it has signed an agreement to spend $100 million to partner with Anew Climate and Aurora Sustainable Lands to earn carbon credits. The partnership will deploy 20 projects in 10 American states for forest protection.
Project details:
TotalEnergies has committed to investing $100 million annually for the next six years toward projects with more than 5 million tons of CO2 in carbon credits.
The projects aim to reduce heavy timber harvesting in forests and to enhance forests’ ability to store more carbon.
The projects will cover 300,000 hectares, in 10 states: Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The projects will also help improve water and soil quality, biodiversity protection, and natural habitat conservation.
The carbon credits will be used to offset TotalEnergies’ Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
According to the WSJ, TotalEnergies has committed $725 million toward carbon offsets prior to 2024.
About TotalEnergies’ partners:
Anew Climate was founded two years ago, as a global leader in climate solutions. It is majority owned by global investing platform TPG Rise Climate.
Aurora Sustainable Lands is a climate-focused asset management company, which has acquired 1.7 million acres of U.S. forestland. It is a joint venture between Anew Climate and other financial sponsors.
Aurora claims to have reduced harvest volumes by more than 50 percent on its properties.
Aurora sold more than $100 million in carbon offsets to buyers in 2023 and 2024, including Microsoft.
Microsoft is by far the world’s biggest buyer of carbon offset credits, ahead of companies such as Airbus, Amazon, BCG, JP Morgan Chase, and Boeing.
For more details around TotalEnergies’ efforts in sustainability, read this.
👍 If you enjoyed this edition of Well Read, consider supporting AAPG's brand of newsletters by forwarding to a friend or colleague and signing up for our other newsletters here.
➡️ Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up for Well Read here.
AAPG thanks our advertisers for their support. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. If you're interested in supporting AAPG digital products, reach out to Melissa Roberts.