Royal Dutch Shell Plc is planning to expand exploration in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Kazakhstan as Europe’s largest oil company seeks to maintain output.

The company is designing a development plan for its West Boreas
discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, which may hold 100 million barrels of
resources, said Malcolm Brinded, Shell’s executive director for
international production and exploration.

Plans for a second platform at the deepwater Mars field in the gulf,
which may add 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day of output, are
also being evaluated, Brinded said today. In January, The Hague-based
company postponed an investment decision on upgrading the Mars platform
because of high industry costs and lower oil prices.

In Kazakhstan, Shell and its partners in the Pearls project in the
Caspian Sea may make a final investment decision in 2011, Brinded said
in a presentation posted today on Shell’s Web site.

“The potential here runs to the hundreds of millions of barrels,”
Brinded said, referring to “significant” oil discoveries at Khazar-1 in
2007 and Auezov-1 in 2008. Shell plans to drill a third exploration
well into the nearby Tulpar structure next year, he said.

Source: Bloomberg

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