Shell looks to sell US shale portfolio after £2bn writedown Royal Dutch Shell is to sell its position in the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, two months after announcing a big writedown on the value of its US shale assets. Shell took impairments of $2.1bn in the second quarter, mostly related to its tight oil assets in North America, and said it had launched a strategic review of its shale portfolio there. Shell said that as part of the review, it had decided that its properties in the Eagle Ford, where it owns 106,000 acres and operates 192 wells, "do not meet our global targets for materiality and scale" but that they "offer a valuable growth opportunity for another operator." A sale would end the company's more than 50-year history in South Texas. Like other majors such as ExxonMobil, Shell was relatively late to the US shale boom, which was driven by smaller, independent oil companies. Their use of techniques such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking - which involves injecting large volumes of water, sand and chemicals into shale formations to create fractures and release the oil and gas trapped inside - unlocked huge reserves that were long considered uncommercial. By the time Shell and the other oil majors began to build up big positions in areas like the Barnett Shale in Texas and the Eagle Ford, the big surge in shale gas output had caused a sharp drop in gas prices, hurting the majors" earnings. Rex Tillerson, chief executive of Exxon, which became a big player in shale gas after its $41bn acquisition of XTO Energy in 2010, admitted last year that the company was suffering as a result of weak gas prices. Shell said it was dealing with the gas glut problem by switching its focus from gas to liquid-rich shales. But despite that, its North American exploration and production business remains in trouble: it suffered a loss in the second quarter and is expected to remain in the red for the rest of this year at least. Shell has also announced plans to sell 600,000 acres in the Mississippi Lime formation in Kansas, and to exit a shale oil research project in Colorado.