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The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell says though it is working through a difficult oil-market downturn, the oil major will remake itself after it completes its $50 billion takeover of British gas producer BG Group this month.

The acquisition, expected to close Feb. 15, will mark the start of a new chapter at Shell,†CEO Ben van Beurden told investors Thursday after reporting a 56 percent slide in fourth-quarter profits. The BG Group acquisition will boost Shell's natural gas reserves by a quarter.

After the deal closes, Shell expects to spend more than $15 billion the biggest portion of its budget this year on deep-water oil developments and its integrated gas business, both of which were central selling points of the BG Group deal.

BG Group has billions tied up in deep-water fields off the coast of Brazil and in liquefied natural gas trains in Australia, and van Beurden said he expects the next wave of energy production to come from 2016 to 2019 as projects come online.

Integrated gas and deep-water, which have been growth priorities for Shell in recent years, will reach significant scale with its BG position included,†van Beurden said.

Shell's LNG earnings halved in 2015 because LNG prices track crude prices, but the company remains hopeful because global demand for LNG has been growing at 8 percent a year over the last decade. Shell Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry acknowledged that the growth in demand for LNG appears to be slowing in China and other markets, but said by the next decade more countries will be buying LNG.

Today, Henry said, 30 nations import LNG and 20 export it, but the number of importing countries is expected to grow to 50 by early next decade, while the number of suppliers grows to 25.

The BG Group deal will come with big operational cuts, though.

We're pulling on powerful financial levers to manage the company in the industry downturn,†van Beurden said.

Shell will cut its budget...