Fed: Duncan says time for Shell to reassess

AAP General News (Australia)
04-24-2001
Fed: Duncan says time for Shell to reassess

CANBERRA, April 24 AAP - Shell Australia Ltd chairman Peter Duncan said today the company
needed to go back to the drawing board to consider its next step.

Federal Treasurer Peter Costello yesterday rejected Royal Dutch/Shell's $10-billion
takeover bid for Woodside Petroleum Ltd on the basis it was not in the national interest.

Mr Duncan said the company was very surprised and disappointed by the decision and
now needed time to reassess its position.

"I think it is time to go back to the table and think about how we move forward now
and we need to take a little bit of time," he told ABC radio.

"We feel pretty emotional about this. We were pretty passionately committed and we
now need to sit back and think about the best way forward for all of us."

Mr Costello said he rejected the bid because of concerns over the marketing and promotion
of LNG from the North West Shelf project, considering Shell's competing interests in other
places.

However, Mr Duncan said Shell believed the merger proposal was in the interests of all parties.

"We believe that this bid and this merger proposal were in the interests of Shell,
of Woodside and of the North West Shelf project and of Australia."

He said the timing of the deal may have been a problem, considering the government
is facing an election at the end of the year.

"We have said at various times in the past month that this has become a particularly
difficult time, unfortunately so, that was never our intention."

AAP eg/rs

KEYWORD: WOODSIDE DUNCAN

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