New Shell CEO has tough task

By Tom Bergin

LONDON (Reuters) - The new chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell faces the tallest order in European business -- to make his company the continent's top earner this year, next year, and well into the next decade.

Peter Voser took over as CEO of Europe's largest company by market value on Wednesday. In recent years, Shell has set and then smashed European records for corporate earnings, notching up net profits of $31 billion (19 billion pounds) last year.

A fall in oil prices hit first quarter profits, but crude has since more than doubled to above $70 a barrel, leading analysts to forecast that Shell is likely to top earnings tables again this year.

With a raft of big new projects coming onstream, Goldman Sachs reckons the oil major will have the best cash flow growth in the oil sector over the next three to five years, suggesting Shell (RDSa.L) is well placed to out-earn other European companies for some time.

However, investors are looking for much more from Voser, who until his elevation was Shell's chief financial officer.

The 50-year old Swiss, who enjoys mountain hiking and football, will be immediately under pressure to start building a pipeline of new projects that will drive Shell's growth into the second half of the next decade.

"We regard visibility around ... production evolution post-2013, without imminent new project sanction, as low. We are worried that this leaves the investment thesis in stasis," analysts at Citigroup said in a research note.

In the past two years, Shell has pressed the button on few big developments. Instead the company chose to hold off until rampant cost inflation in the sector, which had put the profitability of some planned ventures in doubt, cooled.