Feb 1 (Reuters) - Credit ratings agency Standard and Poorson Monday downgraded oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc toA+/A-1 from AA-/A-1+ and put its long-term credit rating oncreditwatch negative citing sliding oil prices.
S&P said Shell's one-notch downgrade, driven by weakerforecasts for its credit metrics over 2016-2018 and slowerprofit improvements, excluded the ratings impact of its BG GroupPlc acquisition.
Shell had said it was prepared for a downgrade as a resultof the BG deal.
But S&P said that as that deal was not assessed for therating action there could be a second downgrade due to Shell'ssignificant additional debt burden and uncertainty over thereturns the transaction will bring.
S&P also put a string of other major European energycompanies on creditwatch negative such as BP PLC, Eni SpA, Repsol SA, Statoil ASA, StatoilForsikring AS, Statoil US Holdings Inc and Total SA.
In April last year, Shell agreed to buy smaller rival BGGroup for 47 billion pounds ($70 billion) in a cash and stockdeal that valued each BG share at a premium of about 52 percentto BG's 90-day trading average.
Prior to the acquisition, Shell was seen as one of the bestcompanies in terms of its ability to balance its books andinvest and pay dividends from cashflow without borrowing tooheavily. (Reporting by Sangameswaran S in Bengaluru; Editing by HughLawson)