Ben van Beurden
Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said the company was 'delivering robust results at a time of ongoing volatility in the global energy market'
Shell has today announced profits of nearly £8.2bn ($9.5bn) between July and September, more than double what it made during the same period the year before.

The oil giant continued to benefit from high gas prices, driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


Comment: Russia continued to supply energy amidst its incursion into Ukraine, so that's not what caused soaring energy prices; it was US money printing during the lockdowns that flooded the world with money which then went chasing commodities; the West's sanctions on Russian energy; and more recently the West's terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.


But profits were down compared with what Shell had earned between April and June when it made £9.9bn ($11.5bn), as the price of oil slowly began to fall.

The war in Ukraine has seen energy prices skyrocket across Europe, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis in the UK, with millions of Britons facing a difficult winter.


Comment: The cost of living crisis has been decades in the making, it accelerated with the financial collapse of 2007, the banking bailouts, more money printing, and extreme austerity measures enforced on the people, the consequences of all of this was merely postponed, until now.


Announcing the results, chief executive Ben van Beurden said: 'We are delivering robust results at a time of ongoing volatility in the global energy market.

Shell is now nine months into what promises to be the company's most profitable year ever, barring an unlikely major collapse in oil and gas prices over the next two months.

The business was already benefiting from a global economy that had reopened after the pandemic and was desperate for energy to fuel its growth.

Then Vladimir Putin waged an unprovoked war in Ukraine in February, pushing European gas prices to all-time highs and the price of oil soared internationally.


Comment: The war was provoked, and Western analysts and officials have been warning that Russia would be forced to respond since the 1990's.


Rishi Sunak has faced calls today to expand the windfall tax on fossil fuel giants following the announcement.

Climate activists and opposition MPs are urging the Prime Minister to go further on his windfall tax as oil and gas giants see profits soar over Russia's war in Ukraine.

Downing Street said 'nothing is off the table' ahead of Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's autumn budget on November 17.


Comment: Apparently nothing like that is on the table either.


Shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband said Shell's profits are 'further proof that we need a proper windfall tax to make the energy companies pay their fair share'.

'Rishi Sunak's existing plans are a pale imitation of Labour's windfall tax and would see billions of pounds of taxpayer money go back into the pockets of oil and gas giants through ludicrous tax breaks,' he said.


Comment: Labour's leader refuses to even say 'what a woman is', amongst a variety of other nefarious doings and dealings, so there's no hope there.


'It tells you everything you need to know about whose side this Conservative Government is on that they refuse to back Labour's proper windfall tax whilst working people, families, and pensioners suffer.'

The energy crisis led then-chancellor Rishi Sunak in May to introduce a windfall tax on oil and gas companies operating in the North Sea.

He announced the 25% surcharge on extraordinary profits to help pay for a package of support for households struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

His plans are due to lapse at the end of 2025 or sooner if oil and gas prices return to 'historically more normal levels', as Vladimir Putin's invasion pushes up prices.

But that has not stopped Shell from handing billions of dollars to its shareholders this year.

On Thursday it announced plans to return a further £3.5bn ($4bn) to shareholders by buying back shares over the next three months, and said it will also increase the dividend by 15 per cent.

It takes the total payout to Shell shareholders to £22.4bn ($26bn) so far this year.

Mr van Beurden said: 'We continue to strengthen Shell's portfolio through disciplined investment and transform the company for a low-carbon future.

'At the same time we are working closely with governments and customers to address their short- and long-term energy needs.'


Comment: Really? Because European governments are warning of rolling blackouts.


Greenpeace yesterday called for a 'proper tax' on the energy giant's profits, which it said could help insulate thousands of homes.

'While Shell continues to bank billions, how many more households need to be forced into fuel poverty before the Government wakes up?

'The only way to address the interlocking cost of living, energy security and climate crises is a street-by-street rollout of home insulation combined with a massive lift in ambition for renewable energy,' the campaign group's UK senior climate adviser, Charlie Kronick, said.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: 'The Conservative Government's refusal to properly tax these eye-watering profits is an insult to families struggling to pay their energy bills.

The chief executive of Shell has said he regrets not acting earlier to reduce his company's environmental damage as he prepares to step down after nearly a decade in charge.

Ben van Beurden said that he should have acted in 2015 on data coming out of the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands.

'There's a few regrets, Mr Ben van Beurden told reporters.

'Not in the sense that I made the wrong decisions, but more often that I made them perhaps - with the benefit of hindsight - a little bit too late,' he said after Shell made the second-highest quarterly profits on record.

'I wish that some of the things that we had as emerging insights in 2015 I had acted on earlier rather than waiting until 2017 to act on them,' he said.

Shell and its partner Exxon reduced their production from the Dutch oil field in the 2010s, but it took a long time for them to recognise the danger caused by the earthquakes that it caused.


Comment: Fair enough, but there are other opportunities for energy extraction elsewhere that do no carry these risks - because the alternative for Europe is freezing, and famine.


Van Beurden also spoke of points of pride, including lowering Shell's own emissions by around one-third during his time in charge.

He also said that one-third of the top 100 staff at Shell are now women, compared with 17 per cent when he joined.

'That might be another point of pride, the fact that we have been, and are still the leading company when it comes to carbon management in the industry,' he said.

But Mr van Beurden said that he had not acted soon enough on Shell's controversial drilling in the Arctic.

After spending around seven billion dollars (£6 billion) drilling off the coast of Alaska the company pulled out in 2015, citing high costs and poor results from drilling.

Mr van Beurden said: 'Another thing I think is a regret is the Arctic. In the end, we went out of it, but with the benefit of hindsight I look back on it and think: Couldn't I have done that earlier and faster?

'So a mix of pride and regret - but I suppose that's always the case after nine years.'