Royal Dutch Shell PLC said Wednesday that it would bring the hammer down harder on spending as it contends with a nearly two-year slump in oil prices that dragged the company’s first-quarter earnings down 83% compared with a year earlier. In its first results since completing a landmark acquisition of BG Group PLC earlier this year, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant said Wednesday that it plans to slash its capital spending by nearly 10% in 2016 and expects its operating costs to fall to $40 billion, down $13 billion compared with 2014 levels. “In very simple terms, we’re taking costs out of projects, and projects out of the funnel,” Shell’s chief financial officer Simon Henry told journalists Wednesday. The spending cuts come as Shell reported a sharp drop in quarterly profit on a current cost-of-supplies basis—a number similar to the net income that U.S. oil companies report—to $800 million, down […]