Royal Dutch Shell reported a steep drop in earnings in the fourth quarter, and the financial squeeze may slow the pace of share buybacks and force more asset sales. Shell’s earnings of $2.9 billion were down by half from a year earlier, leading to a 3 percent drop in its share price on Thursday morning. After the takeover of BG Group several years ago, the Anglo-Dutch company is now just as much a natural gas major as it is an oil major, so the global gas glut is hitting the company hard. Shell is one of the largest LNG exporters in the world. LNG prices in Asia are at a 10-year low and showing very little signs of life. Meanwhile, chemical and refining margins have also narrowed. The oil majors are overbuilding chemical capacity, and are now reeling from the deterioration in that segment. “Chemicals are really at the […]