Royal Dutch Shell has taken a huge $8bn hit from the plunge in crude prices and its decisions to pull out of Alaska and axe a Canadian oil sands project. Reporting its largest quarterly net loss in at least 16 years, the Anglo-Dutch energy group said on Thursday that it was cutting another 1,000 jobs and was determined to “become a more focused and competitive company”. Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, described last month’s halt to a contentious exploration campaign in Alaska and the scrapping of its Carmon Creek oil sands project in western Canada as “difficult” decisions. After writing down its shale gas assets in the Marcellus and Utica regions of the US, Shell recorded $8.2bn in one-off charges, sending it to a net loss of $7.4bn in the three months to September 30, compared with a $4.5bn profit during the same period last year.