Transcript: [From 24 Mins Onwards]

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Anish Kapadia

Anish Kapadia from Palissy Advisors. One of the things that stood out from the presentation, it's an ESG presentation, but is very intensive -- energy intensive in terms of emissions. And there's a whole spectrum of ESG. And one of the issues I wanted to focus on is looking at things actually from the other side though, you look at the industry, the lack of investment has gone into oil and gas over the last 5 years or so, the cutbacks in CapEx. It's one of the reasons behind the very high prices you're seeing in terms of oil and gas at the moment. And it's creating problems all around the world in terms of energy poverty.

 

You're seeing it even in the developed countries. But you've got people in the developing countries that have got to make a choice between switching away from actually dirtier fuels to cleaner fuels and you've got the economic consequences as well. So my question really is, how much are you thinking about the consequences of your actions of not investing enough in energy when we're clearly going to need a lot of fossil fuels over the coming decades.

 

Ben Van Beurden

Yes, it's a good question. It's very topical. Let me start and then see whether my colleagues want to add to it. I think, first of all, you're absolutely right. It -- there is a significant reduction in investment in oil and gas in the last few years. As a matter of fact, when I was speaking with Fatih Birol some time ago, and we talked about the IEA net-zero emissions scenario that came out a year ago. We both sort of said, well, a year on with this strategy or this scenario, we are roughly 2.5 years behind already because we have been traveling in the opposite direction. And as a matter of fact, the only thing that we agreed on was on track with the IEA net-zero scenario was the investment levels in oil and gas. And that's exactly the problem.

 

So the industry in terms of investing has done its piece, not necessarily because we took serious note of the scenario, but simply also because of the pandemic, because of all sorts of other pressures where we felt cash preservation and the direction the company needs to bring us to another place. I would imagine it will take some time for people to step up again investment in oil and gas. But it doesn't mean, by the way, that we are investing less in energy. We're just investing in different energy. So if I want to look at provision of secure, affordable and reliable energy in India, I'd much rather see what we can do with solar rather than to see can we bring more kerosene and diesel to India, and/or can we invest in the upstream, Wouldn't that be a great idea. So I think altogether, our investment levels on energy as such, are still intact. It's just that the portfolio is changing quite significantly.

 

But we need to make sure that, indeed, all that investment that we direct to these newer energy forms is also relatively evenly spread around the world. If we want to talk about reducing fuel poverty or energy poverty, not just in Northwest Europe, but also in the Africa and other parts of the world, we better make sure that some of our strategy very clearly focuses on investing in these areas as well. But I'd like to content that we are still investing as much in energy as before. It's just a different form. And I believe it is also a form that is strategically more advantaged in the future.