Shell CEO to quit in 2014

Moscow, May 2 (IANS/RIA Novosti) The head of the Royal Dutch Shell plc, Peter Voser, will leave his job in the first half of 2014, the oil and gas giant said on its website Thursday.

No explanation was provided for the departure of Voser, 54, a Swiss native who worked at Shell since 1982 and became the company's CEO in 2009.

Shell also named no tentative replacement for Voser, saying only that its board will lead "a structured and comprehensive review of internal and external candidates".

Shell's income attributable to shareholders stood at about $8.18 billion in the first quarter of 2013, a 6-percent decrease year-on-year, but above the forecast of $6.5 billion.

The Anglo-Dutch company signed last month a memorandum with Gazprom, planning to jointly drill for oil and gas on Russia's continental shelf in the Arctic. Shell had to put on hold its Alaskan drilling program in 2013 after protestations by Greenpeace over lack of technologies for safe offshore drilling in the Arctic, with Forbes magazine blaming the $5 billion program's suspension for the departure of Shell's executive vice president David Lawrence in March.

Norwegian Statoil, another company to eye Russia's Arctic shelf, also reported Thursday a decrease in income in the first quarter of 2013, when net income stood at 6.4 billion Norwegian kroner ($1.1 billion), or 58 percent less than over the same period of 2012.

--IANS/RIA Novosti

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