Royal Dutch Shell is to cut more than $15bn in spending in an effort to plug dwindling revenues from oil sales, as it reported a sharp slide in quarterly earnings due to the plunge in crude prices . The Anglo-Dutch energy group, the first of the world’s big oil companies to report full-year results for 2014, on Thursday signalled that a period of adjustment lay ahead for much of the industry following a near 60 per cent slide in crude prices since last summer to less than $50 a barrel. More On this topic IN Oil & Gas Excluding exceptionals such as tax adjustments from the sale of certain assets, profits for the fourth quarter of last year were $3.26bn, lower than analysts’ estimates of about $4.1bn and down from $5.85bn in the third quarter. But earnings were up 12 per cent from a year ago. Shares in the […]