Shell (www.shell.com)has announced that its latest spending plans include a cash injection of about $4 billion (£2.8 billion) for the North Sea oil and gas industry; the investment drive will be rolled out over the next two years. The energygiant also announced that it will scale back its global investment and pinpoint further savings, as it copes with lower oil prices.

Paul Goodfellow, Shell’s vice-president for upstream in UK and Ireland, said its plans “include significant investments with our partners west of Shetland in the Clair and Schiehallion projects, in which Shell has a 28% and 55% share respectively. Shell continues to have a substantial business in the North Sea, with 65 interests in North Sea fields, 33 North Sea platforms and two floating production storage and offloading vessels — one operated by us and one operated on our behalf.”

Mr Goodfellow added: “Shell’s take-over of the BG Group in February has given us an opportunity to accelerate our performance in this ‘lower for longer’ environment. We need to reduce our cost base, improve our production efficiency and have an organisation that best fits our combined portfolio and business plans. That is why we recently announced that Shell will reduce the size of the organisation supporting our UK and Ireland upstream business by around 475 people. Following these changes, Shell will remain a key employer in north-east Scotland, with around 1,700 employees.”