STRATEGY
Our strategy seeks to reinforce our position as a leader in the oil and
gas industry, while helping to meet global energy demand in a
responsible way. We aim to balance growth with returns, by growing
our cash flow and delivering competitive returns through economic
cycles, to finance a competitive dividend and fund investment for future
growth. Safety and environmental and social responsibility are at the
heart of our activities.
Intense competition exists for access to upstream resources and to new
downstream markets. But we believe that our technology, project
delivery capability and operational excellence will remain key
differentiators for our businesses. We expect over 80% of our capital
investment in 2015 to be in our Upstream businesses.
In Upstream, we focus on exploration for new liquids and natural gas
reserves and on developing major new projects where our technology
and know-how add value to the resources holders.
In Downstream, we focus on turning crude oil into a range of refined
products, which are moved and marketed around the world for
domestic, industrial and transport use. In addition, we produce and
sell petrochemicals for industrial use worldwide.
We focus on a series of strategic themes, each requiring distinctive
technologies and risk management:
Our upstream and downstream “engines” are strongly cashgenerative,
mature businesses, which will underpin our financial
performance to at least the end of this decade. We only make
investments in selective growth positions and apply Shell’s distinctive
technology and operating performance to extend the productive lives
of our assets and to enhance their profitability.
Our growth priorities follow two strategic themes: integrated gas
and deep water. These will provide our medium-term growth and we
expect them to become core engines in the future. We utilise Shell’s
technological know-how and global scale to unlock highly
competitive resources positions.
Our longer-term strategic themes are “resource plays” such as shale
oil and gas as well as “future opportunities”, including the Arctic,
Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and heavy oil, where we believe large
reserves positions could potentially become available, with the pace
of development driven by market and local operating conditions, as
well as the regulatory environment.
Meeting the growing demand for energy worldwide in ways that
minimise environmental and social impact is a major challenge for the
global energy industry. We aim to improve energy efficiency in our
own operations, support customers in managing their energy demands
and continue to research and develop technologies that increase
efficiency and reduce emissions in liquids and natural gas production.
Our commitment to technology and innovation continues to be at the
core of our strategy. As energy projects become more complex and
more technically demanding, we believe our engineering expertise will
be a deciding factor in the growth of our businesses. Our key strengths
include the development and application of technology, the financial
and project-management skills that allow us to deliver large field
development projects, and the management of integrated value chains.
We aim to leverage our diverse and global business portfolio and
customer-focused businesses built around the strength of the Shell
brand.
OUTLOOK
We continuously seek to improve our operating performance, with an
emphasis on health, safety and environment, asset performance and
operating costs. For 2015, we will continue to focus on the three key
prio