壳牌大手笔收购英国天然气背后，有五件事你必须知道

荷兰皇家壳牌有限公司将出资700亿美元，收购英国天然气集团（简称BG），这是近十年来全球能源行业最大一笔并购交易。去年油价暴跌导致行业压力重重，整合势在必行，此交易即是明证。关于这笔交易，以下是你需要知道的五件事。

1. 这起并购对行业来说具有里程碑的意义。一般来说，当收购某家石油天然气储备公司的股票比自行钻探的价格更便宜时，能源行业就会发生大型并购。自去年1月以来，BG的股价下跌超过50%，壳牌现在收购BG非常合算，因为它无法用低于收购价的资金配置出堪比BG规模的资产组合。虽说比起15年前，能源业有能力进行收购和适合被收购的公司都少了很多，但行业收购的逻辑现今同样适用。

2. 并购不是为了壮大规模，而是为了效益。上一波石油巨头涌现并购潮，目的是为了成立规模更大、资金实力更强的公司，因为只有实力够强的公司才能不断寻找新的油田储备，而新油田要么在技术风险高的地方（如墨西哥湾或美国的阿拉斯加州），要么是在政治风险高的地方（如俄罗斯、巴西和哈萨克斯坦）。相比之下，这次合并的目的是压缩供应链成本，过去十年里，石油行业一直想当然地以为中国和印度对能源的需求会永远高速增长，于是各家公司肆无忌惮地粗放扩张。如今，壳牌和BG要确保股东收益可以稳步增长，面临的压力都不小（壳牌曾经承诺高现金分红，还抛出250亿美元的股票回购计划证明实力）。

未来几年，两家公司计划每年至少节省25亿美元成本。比如在澳大利亚东北部的昆士兰，两家公司的大型液化天然气项目位置比较接近，共享基础设施有利于提高双方效益。此外，今年1月，壳牌冻结了200亿美元的箭头能源项目（与中石油成立的合资公司）；去年12月，BG确认昆士兰柯蒂斯液化天然气项目损失了20亿美元。总之，两家公司期望2016年能将资本支出压缩到400亿美元以下，去年同期支出为450亿美元。此项交易将催生全球最大的天然气生产商，规模超过了埃克森，也是迄今西欧最大的综合性石油生产商，不过未来三年内，壳牌将削减300亿美元的非核心资产。也就是说，未来三年该公司规模可能不会扩大，反而会精简一些。

3. 可以说，这笔交易里天然气的地位更重要，而不是石油。两家公司都是液化天然气重要的生产商，近来这项贸易在全球飞速发展。究其原因，一是中国和印度两国转换能源消费模式，转向比煤炭污染更少的能源，巩固了对液化天然气的长期需求；二是欧洲需求增长，因为不能再仅靠俄罗斯供应天然气了。合并后的公司将成为全球最大的液化天然气生产商，而且在东非和澳大利亚有未开发的资产。

4. 深水石油开采也是一大重点。海洋石油开发是壳牌和BG优先考虑的合作领域。周三两家公司联合声明称，十年后海上石油产量将上升到近60万桶/天，远高于目前的15万桶/天。要做到这一点，他们需要好好开发在巴西的资产，因其合作伙伴——巴西国家石油公司腐败蔓延且成本膨胀，许多新发现大型油田的开采一直停滞不前。

5. 并购与美国的页岩气无关。尽管廉价页岩气的出现，使两家公司对美国进口液化天然气方面的投资都遭受了损失（两家公司在美国有五个以上再气化终端）。但二者都不是美国本土页岩气的主要生产商。没错，BG是收购了德克萨斯、路易斯安那和宾夕法尼亚的大片页岩油气田，但每天石油产量不足6万桶，投资开发该项目的计划也一再推迟。（财富中文网）

译者:魏永丽

审校:夏林

Royal Dutch Shell Plcis taking over BG Group PlcBRGYY 27.50% in a $70 billion deal, the biggest the energy industry has seen in over a decade, and the clearest sign yet of consolidation pressures caused by last year’s collapse in oil prices. Here’s what you need to know.

1. It’s a landmark moment for the sector.Big mergers in the energy industry typically happen when it becomes cheaper to buy oil and gas reserves on the stock market than to drill for them. BG’s shares had fallen over 50% since January last year, and there was no way Shell could develop a comparable portfolio of assets organically for less than what it’s paying for BG today. Even if the number of potential candidates for such deals is smaller than it was 15 years ago, the same logic will surely apply to some other oil and gas companies out there.

2. It’s not about size, it’s about efficiency.The last wave of oil mega-mergers was all about needing a bigger, stronger balance sheet because in order to replace reserves, oil majors were having to go to places which either involved more technological risks (like the Gulf of Mexico or Alaska) or political ones (like Russia, Brazil and Kazakhstan). By contrast, this merger is about squeezing costs out of the supply chain, after a decade in which the industry got fat on the assumption that the demand of China and India for energy could never be satisfied. Shell and BG need to ensure that returns to shareholders can be sustained (Shell was quick to promise higher cash dividends and a $25 billion share buyback program to justify its rationale).

The two companies aim to save at least $2.5 billion a year in costs now and more in years to come. One example of this is in Queensland, north-east Australia, where the two companies have big LNG projects relatively close to each other, and where sharing infrastructure costs will improve the economics of both. Shell had frozen its $20 billion Arrow project (a joint venture with Petrochina) in January, while BG wrote $2 billion off its Queensland Curtis LNG project in December. In all, they expect to squeeze capital expenditure below $40 billion by 2016, from over $45 billion last year. Although the deal will create a bigger gas producer than Exxon, and by far western Europe’s largest integrated player, it will be looking to shed $30 billion of non-core assets within three years. In three years’ time, the company may not end up being much bigger, but it will be a lot leaner.

3. This deal is arguably about gas more than it is about oil.Both companies are big players in the fast-growing global trade in liquefied natural gas (LNG), a trade underpinned by the long-term imperatives of switching China and India to energy sources that pollute less than coal, and giving Europe alternatives to Russian gas. The combined company will be the biggest LNG producer in the world, with a strong portfolio of as-yet undeveloped assets in East Africa and Australia.

4. It’s also about deep-water oil production.Offshore is the other area of business that Shell and BG are prioritising. In a joint presentation Wednesday, they forecast that output from offshore could rise to nearly 600,000 barrels a day by the end of the decade from just under 150,000 b/d today. To do that, they’ll need a big improvement in their fortunes in Brazil, where the development of huge new discoveries has been hobbled by rampant corruption and cost inflation at their partner, Petrobras.

5. It most definitely isn’t about U.S. shale–except inasmuch as cheap shale gas has undermined the math behind the two companies’ investments in importing LNG into the U.S. (where they have no fewer than five regasification terminals). Neither company is a major player in shale from the ‘lower 48′ U.S. states. True, BG has bought acreage in Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, but it produces the equivalent of less than 60,000 barrels of oil a day from them and has repeatedly put off spending big money on developing them.