(MENAFN- AFP) Energy giant Royal Dutch Shell announced on Monday the sale of stakes in Australian natural gas assets for more than one billion US dollars to a Kuwaiti state company.Shell said it had agreed to sell its 8.0-percent equity interest in the Wheatstone-Iago gas field and 6.4-percent interest in the Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project for $1.135 billion (837 million euros) to the Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company.Despite the sales, "Shell will remain a major player in Australia's energy industry", Shell's new chief executive officer Ben van Beurden said in a statement."However, we are refocusing our investment to where we can add the most value with Shell's capital and technology. We are making hard choices in our world-wide portfolio to improve Shell's capital efficiency," he added.The announcement comes just a few days after the Anglo-Dutch group issued a profits warning.The London-listed company had warned on Friday that its fourth-quarter earnings were set to be "significantly lower than recent levels of profitability". Profit on a current cost of supplies (CCS) basis -- which strips out changes to the value of oil and gas inventories -- was set to plunge 70 percent to about $2.2 billion in the three months to December compared with the fourth quarter of 2012, Shell had said.The news marked a downbeat start for Beurden -- the Dutch national who replaced Peter Voser on January 1.
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