Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) plans to lower spending in the Americas by a fifth as Europe ’s largest oil producer focuses on more profitable operations. It’s “not acceptable” that Shell, now deploying about 36 percent or $80 billion of its capital in North America, has been losing money, Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said. Shell expects to reduce capital investment in upstream operations, or exploration and production, in the Americas by 20 percent this year and North American resource spending by the same proportion, the company said today in a presentation . “That leaves us with about $10 billion in total for the upstream Americas and about $4 billion for the shale,” Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said. “Some of that does include Argentina and Canada. It’s not all in America.” Van Beurden has pledged to shrink spending costs this year and speed up asset sales including […]