Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Monday that it was indefinitely postponing plans to develop a proposed oil-sands surface mine in Western Canada, the energy company’s latest sign of retrenchment amid a drop in crude oil prices to six-year lows. The company said it would withdraw its regulatory application to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency for a 200,000-barrel-a-day oil project known as the Pierre River North surface mine in northern Alberta. That move followed Shell’s decision last month to cut up to 10% of its 3,000 oil-sands-related jobs. Shell was the first major energy company to shed workers in Canada’s oil patch in response to the recent swoon in global crude oil prices to half their levels in mid-2014. Since then, other large Canadian oil-sands producers have also slashed jobs. Like Shell, some have deferred longer-term projects, but most plan to finish construction of oil-sands projects already under […]