Capital expenditure and portfolio
Cash capital expenditure
Cash capital expenditure in 2021 was $6.3 billion, compared with $7.3 billion in 2020.
Lower cash capital expenditure in 2021 was mainly driven by deferral and slippage of activities across the portfolio and divestments.
Portfolio and business development
We took the following key portfolio decisions during 2021:
- In Brazil, in August 2021, we announced the final investment decision (FID) taken by the Libra consortium, operated by Petrobras, to contract the Mero-4 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to be deployed at the offshore Mero field in the Santos Basin.
- In Malaysia, in August 2021, we announced the FID on the Timi gas development project.
- In the US Gulf of Mexico, in July 2021, we took the FID for Whale, a deep-water development in the US Gulf of Mexico that features a 99% replicated hull and an 80% replication of the topsides of our Vito project.
- We continue to review positions that are outside our risk appetite, such as Nigeria onshore. In the last decade we have reduced the total number of licences by half and we continue to review the portfolio options for Nigeria onshore oil and gas.
We continued to divest assets during 2021, including:
- in Canada, in April 2021, we completed the sale of our Duvernay light oil position in Alberta. The transaction had an effective date of January 1, 2021;
- in Egypt, in September 2021, we completed the sale of our upstream assets in Egypt’s Western Desert;
- in Nigeria, in January 2021, we completed the sale of our 30% interest in oil mining lease (OML) 17 in the Eastern Niger Delta, and associated infrastructure;
- in the Philippines, in May 2021, we agreed to sell our 100% shareholding in Shell Philippines Exploration B.V. (SPEX). We aim to complete the sale in 2022; and
- in the USA, in December 2021, we completed the sale of our Permian business.
As announced on February 28, 2022, Shell intends to exit its joint ventures with Gazprom and related entities, including our 50% interest in Salym Petroleum Development and our 50% interest in Gydan energy venture. For more information see Note 32.
