Shell share price: Group to ink deal with Gazprom on Baltic LNG

Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA) is set to sign a liquefied natural gas (LNG) deal with Russia’s Gazprom, Reuters has reported. In other Shell news, analysts at Liberum remain bullish on the stock in the wake of the FTSE 100 group’s capital markets day last week.

Shell’s share price has been steady this morning, having inched 0.29 percent higher to 1,727.00p as of 08:36 BST. The shares are underperforming the benchmark FTSE 100 index which currently stands 0.92 percent higher at 5,978.11 points. The group’s shares have lost more than seven percent of their value over the past year, but are up some 12 percent in the year-to-date.
Reuters quoted Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov as telling reporters yesterday that Shell and Gazprom were set to sign a deal on a planned Baltic LNG project on the sidelines of a forum in St. Petersburg later this week. He added that the deal will be signed in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will meet the Anglo-Dutch group’s chief executive Ben van Beurden at the forum. The newswire noted that Gazprom plans to build the plant, which may produce up to 20 million tonnes of LNG per year, by December 2021.

In a separate development, Liberum reiterated its ‘buy’ rating on Shell yesterday, and hiked its price target on the stock from 1,904p to 1,940p.
“The capital markets day provided the first chance to revisit the investment case since the acquisitions of BG,” the broker’s analyst Andrew Whittock said, as quoted by Citywire, adding that the enlarged group’s “asset portfolio and improving markets should enable Shell to maintain the dividend, helped by further pressure on costs, and improve return on average capital employed and net debt”.
As of 08:59 BST, Wednesday, 15 June, Royal Dutch Shell Plc ‘A’ share price is 1,728.00p.