Our businesses and organisation
Financial data
Projects
Outlook
Strategy
Shell’s purpose is to power progress together with more and cleaner energy solutions. Our strategy is to strengthen our position as a leading energy company by providing oil, natural gas and low-carbon energy as the world’s energy system changes. Safety and social responsibility are fundamental to our business approach.
The rising standard of living of a growing global population is likely to continue to drive demand for energy, including oil and gas, for years to come. At the same time, technology changes and the need to tackle climate change means there is a transition under way to a lower-carbon, multi-source energy system with increasing customer choice.
Strategic ambitions
Against this backdrop, we have the following strategic ambitions:
- to provide a world-class investment case. This involves growing free cash flow and increasing returns, all built upon a strong financial framework and resilient portfolio;
- to thrive in the energy transition by responding to society’s desire for more and cleaner, convenient and competitive energy; and
- to sustain a strong societal licence to operate and to contribute to society through a shared value approach to our activities.
The execution of our strategy is founded on becoming a more customer-centric and simpler company, focused on delivering higher and more predictable returns and growing free cash flow. By investing in competitive projects, driving down costs and selling non-core businesses, Shell continues to seek to reshape its portfolio in order to become a more resilient and focused company.
Our ability to achieve our strategic ambitions depends on how we respond to competitive forces. We continuously assess the external environment – the markets as well as the underlying economic, political, social and environmental drivers that shape them – to evaluate changes in competitive forces and business models. We undertake regular reviews of the markets we operate in and analyse our traditional and non-traditional competitors’ strengths and weaknesses to understand our competitive position. We maintain business strategies and plans that focus on actions and capabilities to create and sustain competitive advantage. We maintain a risk management framework that regularly assesses our response to, and risk appetite for, identified risk factors.
Portfolio and priorities
As part of our strategy, we divide our portfolio into strategic themes, each with distinctive capabilities, growth strategies, risk management, capital allocation and expected returns.
Through all of our strategic themes, our intention is to be in fundamentally advantaged and resilient positions to drive an optimal free cash flow and returns profile over multiple timelines. When we set our plans and goals, we do so on the basis of delivering sustained returns over decades.
We aim to leverage our diverse and global business portfolio and customer-focused businesses built around the strength of the Shell brand.
