Shell's Gas Project in Nigeria to Tackle Electricity Issue

Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A has entered into an accord with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and other two firms for developing the natural gas reserves of Nigeria, per media reports.   

The development program for the $3.7-billion project will likely solve Nigeria’s concern of fuel supply shortage by 2020. Collectively, the seven projects, with reserve potential of 17.7 trillion cubic feet, are expected to provide Nigeria with additional natural gas volumes of 3.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/D). The report added that the produced natural gas from the seven fields will probably back the country’s target of generating 15 GW of electricity by 2020.    

The initiatives to provide people with access to electricity seems encouraging as Nigeria — the poorest country in the world, per Brookings Institution — has been witnessing a steep fall in capital investments in oil and natural gas projects, per media reports. In other words, while many countries are investing in oil developments to capitalize on the recovering commodity prices, lack of efforts by the government had led to significantly lower investments in Nigeria. In fact, the last remarkable oil discovery in Nigeria was made by Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM for the Owowo-3 well in 2016.

Headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands, Shell is a leading integrated energy firm in the world. Over the past year, the stock has rallied 29.6%, outperforming the 23.7% collective gain of the stocks belonging to the industry.

Currently, Shell carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other prospective players in the energy space are Continental Resources, Inc. CLR and Murphy Oil Corporation MUR. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Continental Resources beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in the last three quarters, the average positive surprise being 80.5%.

Murphy Oil surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the last four quarters.

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