*Loses 7 including a policeman in an attack in Nigeria
Shell Plc has made an impressive financial performance delivering $20.6 billion in 2021 as against a loss of $21.5 billion in 2020.
Shell’s Chief Executive Officer, Ben van Beurden, stated this in his review of the company’s 2021 Annual Report and Accounts. He said Shell’s cash flow from operations went from $34.1 billion in 2020 to $45.1 billion in 2021.
“Our distributions to shareholders were $9.1 billion in 2021, the same as in 2020. We expect shareholder distributions to increase significantly in 2022.
“Shell’s net debt reduced from $75.4 billion in 2020 to $52.6 billion at the end of 2021. This brought us below the $65 billion milestone, at which point we increased total shareholder distributions to 20-30% of cash flow from operations.
“We announced a share buyback programme of $8.5 billion for the first half of 2022. This will include $5.5 billion from the sale of our shales business in the US Permian Basin.
“We expect to increase our dividend by around 4% to 25 US cents a share for the first quarter of 2022.”
Beurden also confirmed Shell’s sanctions against Russia because of invasion of Ukraine. “We also decided to withdraw from involvement in all Russian hydrocarbons, including crude oil, petroleum products, gas and LNG, in a phased manner, in line with government guidance. We will shut our service stations, aviation fuels and lubricants operations in Russia. We will go ahead with these steps, regardless of their financial implications, while doing everything we can to support our staff in Russia.
“We also took decisive action in support of global economic measures against Russia. We announced our intention to exit joint ventures with Gazprom, a majority Russian-government-owned business, and related entities. This included the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy venture. We also intend to end our involvement in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project.
“At the end of 2021, Shell had around $3 billion in non-current assets in these ventures in Russia. We expect our actions will have an impact on the book value of Shell’s Russia assets and lead to impairments.
“We employ around 1,500 staff and contractors in Ukraine. We have been doing everything we can to try to ensure their safety and well-being,” he said.
He also noted that in 2021, “sadly, six of our contractor colleagues and a police officer were killed in an appalling attack in Nigeria.”
