殼牌 (SHEL) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to the Royal Shell 2021 Q3 Results Announcement Q&A session. Today's session will be recorded. (Operator Instructions)

I would like to introduce Ms. Jessica Uhl, Mr. Ben Van Beurden and Mr. Huibert Vigeveno.

Welcome, everyone, to the live Q&A on Shell's third quarter result. This quarter's performance is a result of the strength of our portfolio and how well positioned we are for the economic recovery. We are delivering sector-leading cash and making progress towards becoming a net-zero emissions energy business.

Let me also reference the investor letter published yesterday by Third Point. We issued a statement to acknowledge our receipt of the letter and to say we have had initial conversations with Third Point through our Investor Relations team. We will engage further with them as we do with all of our shareholders. I know you'll have questions on this topic, and I hope you'll understand there isn't much more we can say at this moment.

So today, Ben, Huibert and I will be answering your questions. (Operator Instructions) And with that, could we have the first question, please? Tracy, over to you.

(Operator Instructions) We will now take our first question from Oswald Clint from Bernstein.

My first question is for Ben. Ben, you very bravely sat on a stage last week at the TED Conference and a tough crowd. But I wanted to get your reflections on that, please, in terms of winning over the public and also the views of, I mean, certain shareholder types who were on the stage with you. I mean the question is, do you think you can eventually appease all of these disparate views? And -- or do you think just successfully executing and getting powering progress strategy unlocked this side of 2025 will ultimately prove the delta is wrong?

And then secondly, I want to ask about LNG. I think 10% or maybe 20% of your LNG term contracts are up for renewal over the next 3 years. It seems like a pretty good time to be renegotiating those seems to be a bit of a seller's market. So do you think you'll be able to increase the slope on these contracts? And on that, I think my own impression was Maarten was a pretty tough negotiator in this respect. Should I be worried that he's left?

Ben, I'll let you start with the first question.

Well, I will not answer the second question. I think it's probably more for Jessica. But let me say one thing, Oswald. If you haven't [whilst so on] yet, then better pay attention to how he negotiates. But on the TED thing, well, I'm not sure whether the rest have seen it. So maybe a bit of context. It was indeed a dialogue with an activist -- actually 2 activists, I would say, although 1 called themselves an active owner. And it I think it's -- to be perfectly honest, the discussion with Chris James, I thought was very good. I respect him very much for his perspective. The one with the activist probably less so. But I think it also shows a little bit indeed the sentiment in society these days about the narrative around our companies. And the inability, I suppose, to also listen and see what it is that we have to say.

I think it's nevertheless important, Oswald, that we keep on trying and that we bring our perspectives in. And that we also position our perspectives not just as a sort of golden calculating asset developer or whatever, but also human beings. It is after all also my planet. I also have 4 kids, and I also have a personal reputation and a perspective that I need to look after. And for me, therefore, as I said on that stage, this is highly personal. It always was, it was never going to be any different.

Can we convince our critics? Our real critics, probably never. Can we convince significant parts of society? Well, I hope so. And -- but I'm also really certain that what I also said right at the end, the words, trust me, are not going to cut it anymore. I can probably just do that with my children, but it needs to be a new set of facts that needs to emerge around our company. And I think we're working very hard on that. Again, this quarter, you'll see lots of proof points, and we will continue to add to these proof points. And hopefully, at some point in time, the narrative will simply change because the facts have changed.

Oswald, in terms of your second question on LNG and the outlook on the contract pricing going forward, this price environment is certainly supportive in terms of shifting up the value we can achieve in our long-term contracts, and I would say that we've had some success in that respect. These uncertain times, these high prices bring value to companies such as ourselves who can provide the stability and certainty in terms of supply. And certainly, our customers value more certainty on the pricing and are willing to pay for that and pay for that risk management from a pricing perspective, and we're starting to see that.

So I'm optimistic that this will have a positive effect on our contract renegotiations that will occur over the coming years. In terms of Maarten leaving, I'm sad to see him leave Shell, and I wish him very well. He's been a great partner on the Executive Committee. Wael he's also a fantastic leader, he is very good at getting the most value out of the business as he's run, and we've seen that in the Upstream. I'm looking forward to his impact in Integrated Gas, and he is known as being a pretty good negotiator himself.

We will now take our next question from Michele Della Vigna from Goldman Sachs.

It's Michele. I have 2 questions. The first one probably for you, Jessica. It's very welcome to see a major recovery in the LNG volume from your guidance for Q4. I was wondering if we should expect this to allow the trading and volume maximization to come through in the LNG results in the fourth quarter after effectively very low results in Q2 and Q3. And then one question for Huibert on refining. We are seeing much higher margins, but we're also seeing higher costs for energy, for carbon in Europe. Should we expect a material improvement in the profitability of the business as we go into Q4 and then next year? Or do we run the risk that this is just a cost push higher and that therefore, margins do not substantially improve?

Michele, thank you for the questions. I'll start with the first and then hand over to Huibert. In terms of the LNG business, both in Q3 and the outlook, let me just spend a couple of minutes -- or a couple of moments rather on Q3 and then shift to the outlook. In the third quarter, our underlying assets have performed well from an LNG perspective, and those assets have seen upside associated with the current price environment. So for instance, Prelude has been ramping up. Those volumes are being sold into the current market pricing. And that caused some $400 million improvement from Q2 to Q3 in our LNG business.

However, in the third quarter, from a trading and optimization perspective, there were supply disruption issues that unfortunately continued into the third quarter from third-party gas issues flowing through into the terms of the LNG supply chain for our trading business. That had a negative effect for us in the quarter. So it's really the trading piece and the supply from third-party suppliers that have had a negative impact in the third quarter. So I'd like to make the distinction from our own operations and our own assets versus some of what's happening on the trading side.

If you look forward, unfortunately, some of those issues, we expect to continue through the fourth quarter and even into the first quarter. I think we'll have this behind us as we get into the second quarter in 2022. However, this positive price environment will be reflected in the performance or the returns that we'll generate from our assets. But some of the issues that we see in the third quarter on supply from a trading perspective will persist a bit into the fourth quarter and into the first quarter and hopefully be behind us by the second quarter of next year. Huibert?

Yes. Thanks very much, Jessica, and thanks, Michele, for the question. Looking at the refinery margins, we indeed saw an average uptick in Q3. Looking into Q4, we, within our own portfolio, still have some items around maintained turnarounds at Scotford, at Rhineland and the effects of Hurricane Ida at our Norco refinery. What I can tell you is that indeed, the cost structures of some of these refineries, particularly the feedstocks and associated items, have gone up. But when I was visiting our Pernis refinery 2 weeks ago, I can assure you that there are daily and nightly calls between economics and scheduling and our trading team to constantly optimize and determine how we further can gain value out of that. On the future outlooks of refinery margins, it is not too much I can say other than that I do believe that on a global scale, there is still quite some overcapacity.

Great. Thanks, Huibert.

We will now take our next question from Lydia Rainforth from Barclays.

Two questions, if I could. The first one, just on the emissions targets and the new end target, 50% reduction for Scope 1, Scope 2. I think that's already included within the CapEx plan. So I'm just trying to work out what is different or what's additional to where we were in February?

And then secondly, Huibert, marketing is clearly going very well. How does this as a business interact with the partnerships that are outlined in the presentation? Effectively, are you seeing a lot more demand for these carbon management and effectively energy as a service? And I know I've asked you, but this mainly -- it's about the idea actually does Shell work better as one integrated company rather than lots of different one.

Thank you, Lydia. I'll start with the first question, then hand over to Huibert for the second. So yes, the emissions targets we announced today, really pleased to have those out into the market. This is the absolute emissions target for our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions under operational control, where we're looking to reduce this by some 50% between 2016 and 2030. And indeed, in order to achieve that, we have already at hand, both the strategy as well as the capital allocation that's required to deliver on that ambition. What's different now is that we've added an absolute target. I think that we've complemented our targets. But all of the levers that are necessary to achieve that by 2030 were contemplated when we introduced this strategy in February.

So yes, from a CapEx perspective, and importantly, from a returns perspective, we don't expect this additional target to cause any change in that. It's simply executing the strategy that we'd laid out. And of course, each week and each month, we learn new things, certain things go better than expected. Certain things didn't go -- don't go quite as fast as we would hope. So of course, we're learning every day. But essentially, the main levers that we identified in Strategy Day '21 in terms of what is needed to achieve this reduction already in place, and therefore, the capital has already been considered and the returns are already considering these changes. Huibert?

Yes. Thanks, Jessica, and Lydia. A couple of things. You're absolutely right that our marketing businesses are doing extremely well. Since 2013, we have a net earnings CAGR of more than 7%. And as you could see in the presentation Jessica gave that we continue to perform well. A lot of that is due to many factors. It's around our focus on premium products like V-Power and the penetration we can get. It's our focus on loyalty customers. It's our increase in convenience retailing, which we've now increased to 12,000 sites and actually is generating a gross margin of more than $1 billion.

But you also have to realize a lot of that is integrated as well. We operate in 80 countries in retail, and that's all integrated with our trading and supply businesses, with our distribution businesses. So it's really an integrated value chain. Also, if you look at the way we run our EV charging, our ambition is to be able to provide you as a customer the EV facilities you need where you are, when you are. So that can be at home. That can be on the street. That can be at destinations, so at Waitrose. Or it can be as you go to one of our retail sites. And with that, we will also then offer you the ability to recharge yourself. But all those activities are coupled together, and we need to make it very easy for you.

But there are other important parts of our marketing business, for instance, our Lubricants business, where we're now 15 years in a row, #1, and we increased our market share. That's fully integrated with energy and chemicals parks of the future as we need to provide high-quality [basals] group 2, group 3, to be able to make these great lubricants.

Our top-tier lubricant, actually, which can give you a fuel efficiency of 4% to 5% for passenger car comes actually from a base oil from Qatar GTL. So there, you can really see the integrated nature. Another example is bitumen, where that's fully integrated with our energy and chemical parks where we make the quality bitumen based on the customer demand. So customer demand is working from the customer back, looking at the integrated nature of the energy and chemicals parks we have.

Great. Thanks, Huibert.

We will now take our next question from Irene Himona from Societe Generale.

My first question, back to the new Scope 1 and 2 absolute emissions reduction target, is it possible to split it in 2, please? So how much of that will be from disposals versus own decarbonization? And then what will be the contribution of the Permian disposal to that 50% target? And then my second question, Huibert, on marketing, if you can please talk a little bit about what you're seeing in your key geographies in terms of retail demand recovery and which areas remain problematic for you at that retail end.

Thanks, Irene. Ben?

Yes. Thanks, Irene. On the target, maybe again, recap a little bit. So it's a 50% reduction target compared to 2016, when we had 83 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions coming down to 41 million. If you would compare it to '19, it's a 48% reduction. So that is, therefore, also better than what the court ruling and the Hague required us to do. So that's why we are saying it's an important contribution to that ruling. And it's, of course, just the emissions that are under our control that we can do something with. So emissions from our own facilities as well as the emissions associated with the energy that we buy power most of the time.

Now can we break that down? Yes, we can, and we will give you probably an update by the time we get to the AGM for next year because this is part also of our plan to put forward the progress that we are making with the attainment of our targets and ask for an advisory vote from our shareholders to understand what they feel about the progress that we are making. We actually made quite good progress. We have already done out of that 50%, 17% by the end of this year. So you can see that we are making progress.

Are there divestments in there? Yes, there is, but also closures and conversions and high grading of facilities, et cetera, et cetera. But most of it is indeed just that. It is a shutdown of a crude distiller in Pulau Bukom. It is a conversion of a refinery into a terminal. It is more efficient furnaces. It's also going to be CCS, and it's also going to be other components that contribute to it.

Now how much is the Permian negligible? Because you have to bear in mind, our Scope 1 emissions and even most of our Scope 2 emissions are associated with our refineries, our chemical plants, our LNG plants and our GTL plants. And if you look at the contribution on Scope 1 and Scope 2 of our Upstream, it is actually a very small amount. It is a few percent. And I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I would be surprised if it was more than 0.5 percentage points if you look at the Permian.

Irene, we have also a video that we put together explaining, again, how Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions work, what we're doing about it, what are the quantums, how are we tackling them? And I would recommend you take a view of it because it's probably one of the least well-understood aspects of our strategy, how all these scopes come together and what we are doing with it. Thank you.

So if you look at the mobility volumes, we see actually an interesting trend. If I look at Q3 compared to Q2 of this year, we're probably at 106% of volume. And actually, it was our highest volume in the last 7 quarters. So then you might say, when was it before that? Well, we're not at the levels exactly on a volume basis on Q3 '19 yet. That's around 92%, 90% of quarter 3 this year. But I do see quite some regional differences.

So you ask me, well, which region is behind and which one is doing better? I particularly still see a bit of a softness in the East, and that's obviously many countries together. And there is a direct correlation with the -- still the impact of COVID-19 and the lockdowns. If you look like a country like Philippines, where we have more than 1 million customers, there's been basically a lockdown for around 18 months right now. If you look at Malaysia, there's still some severe lockdowns and other parts of the East as well. So we see that through in our volume figures as well.

I think one of the things we are demonstrating, however, is how resilient our mobility business is that is not depending purely on the volumes that we're able to make these very high-end record earnings. I think this quarter is probably our second best ever for mobility, driven by different factors. And I think Jessica presented today that we show that 40% to 50% of customers and many of our key markets don't come for fuel, they actually come for convenience retailing. So you can see the differentiation coming through in that part of the business.

Thanks, Huibert.

We will now take our next question from Biraj Borkhataria from RBC.

I just wanted to follow up on marketing, given your slides today. That business has been incredibly stable business, and it actually generated some of the highest returns in the portfolio. And it looks like through the pandemic, the metrics are only getting stronger and going in the right direction. You could make a -- or I could make a reasonable argument that this business should be on a much higher multiple than the rest of the business, but obviously, it gets hidden in the mix. So the question is, if you were to look at a partial listing or float of the marketing business but maintain the majority stake, what is the downside to Shell? Or what would you lose?

And then second question is just following up on Ben's comments around Scope 1 and 2. Growing your LNG business is a strategic priority for you. But obviously, from a Scope 1 and 2 basis, those can be quite carbon-intensive. And obviously, there, you're adding large chunks to capacity as you get these things online. So as you put the targets out today, does that have any implications for your ability to grow that business? Or does that imply a shift from equity volumes to be an offtaker? Or are there any other constraints around that?

Thank you, Biraj. And Huibert, do you want to share your thoughts on integration value and versus kind of a stand-alone entity? And then, Ben?

Yes, I think -- absolutely. And I think a couple of things. I think -- On the question on, say, price earnings, one of the things we realize is that we need to -- should disclose much more about our marketing businesses, and that's exactly what we're doing now, and we will continue to do next year, that you and others, Biraj, can understand that business in much more detail and ask questions in much more detail around it and then hopefully see that reflected back in the investor base.

But it's also very clear in my mind that a lot of the value is driven by the integration we have. I gave you some examples of our Mobility business. There's no way we can run that business without the close integration with trading supply distribution to get that physical flow of molecules being able to source that better. If you look at our Lubricants business, it's not only actually integration with [basals], it's also on the additive side. Our bitumen business is totally integrated in itself as well. So there are many reasons why it is actually one value chain.

Then if you go to the next step and you look at the value chains of the future, the ones we're creating, for instance, with sustainable aviation fuel, it is really -- the game for me, for instance, of what we're trying to do with Pernis HEFA, where we are building one of the largest biofuels plant in Europe, it's the optimization opportunity gives me. So let me explain to you. Because I have the customer base in aviation, but also in shipping and also in chemicals, I can determine by making those biofuels, how do I optimize that always better. I need to have a location where I can make them, where I have the people, where I have the logistics and where I actually have the permits. And then I can always optimize between shall I make more sustainable aviation fuels, shall I make more renewable diesel or shall I make more bio naphtha for cleaner chemicals?

But then you need to work from that customer back. And for instance, in the Pernis example, if I want to make sustainable aviation fuel, I actually have a pipeline from Pernis furnace to Schiphol that I can go directly into the plane of KLM or any other customer I have with a blend of biofuels. So that integration value is real, it's complex, but it is really a very high value for us in the marketing businesses.

And just to add to that point very briefly. Indeed, there were times that we had some of these value chains sort of cut up and distributed with different ownership structures. I actually personally spent a large part of my career and doing all of that because you actually do create tremendous barriers for Chinese walls and arm's-length relationships and noncompetes and antitrust issues, et cetera, that actually eradicate the integration value that Huibert so well described.

But on your other point, the LNG plants, yes, indeed, they do have a certain quantum of emissions. And of course, the ones we operate, which are quite a few, actually come on to our account. So we've been very clear, therefore, that if we want to build new LNG plants, they better come with very competitive carbon footprints on the operational side, and we have to find ways to offset this and offset not with nature-based solutions, but offset it with savings elsewhere.

So I've been very clear with our organization. If we are to do another LNG plant, say, for instance, in Canada, it needs to come either without emissions or you need to find a way to reduce emissions elsewhere because we are on a trajectory to bring down our emissions to net zero by 2050. And that means that every emission that you add, you somehow have to take out elsewhere. And that, I think, is the real challenge, but it's also the challenge that the world has, and that's a challenge that we are rising to.

Great. Thanks, Ben.

We will now take our next question from Roger Read from Wells Fargo.

I just would like to come back, you were talking about a little with the last responses on the value of integration. Because I mean I think it's a fair question with any company, does it make sense to have as many different businesses in it. You talked a little bit about it with lubes in the Downstream. But as we step back and look at the overall operation, probably a question for you, Ben, but where all should we think about the integration value? How should we, as analysts and investors, think about Shell as one company as opposed to some of the proposals that are out there? And what is the strong case for integration?

Yes. Thanks very much, Roger. I think, of course, integration is it's quite often an overused word, and we have to work harder to make clear what we actually mean by it. But there's 2 levels, I would say, we have to think about, one of which is the fact that indeed, we use our assets and our supply chains and our customer contracts and our trading and supply business as 1 ecosystem within which we can optimize. You heard some of the examples that Huibert earlier mentioned. But actually, we have that across our entire piece.

You will have seen that we -- also in the introductory video that Jessica did, we talked about how we're going to use wind power on sea to turn into hydrogen, to turn into molecules and to turn into transportation fuels. All these things are only possible because we have the opportunity to integrate and we have the opportunity to treat our business as a network. And much in the same way, of course, when you think about biofuels and the like. So integration is partly the network effect. So it is an enabler for doing energy transition plays that are otherwise incredibly hard to piece together if you have to do it with disparate businesses.

The second level of integration is financial integration. So many of these businesses that we are building for the future are going to be, of course, absorbing cash because we build them from very low to no materiality to something that is quite significant. That has to be funded as well. We've been very clear in our strategy that we see our Upstream business not just providing the energy that we need today in this world, but also the funding that we need to build the energy system of the future. Now we believe that we can do that quite efficiently in Shell, and that is what our strategy is all about. If you again take that away, you effectively take away our ability to invest in the future of energy.

So that's 2 levels to think about it. There's much more, of course, that we could talk about. But these are 2 very important considerations for the holistic and coherent strategy that we have.

Thanks, Ben.

We will now take our next question from Christyan Malek from JPMorgan.

It's Christyan Malek. So first, may I just say congratulations to Wael on getting his Lebanese roots. I can't think of anyone better to drive the best deal. But one question for you, Ben, just to follow-on on what you just mentioned on the previous answer, if I may. I'd just like to talk about the market narrative around the sector that you referred to. If we just step away from ESG COP26 and all the sentiment, is it just simply cyclical? And I mean that in the sense that you fast forward a year and commodity prices remained strong and Shell is generating significant cash flows.

That narrative diminishes in favor of more sort of the constructive dialogue around your business to decarbonize. Now assuming that plays out, I'm referring to the shareholder activism that we're seeing, why wouldn't you consider breaking up your business if it generated shareholder value if, at the same time, you can deliver on your commitments to climate change. And I say that assuming that investors deem oil companies as no longer toxic, so to speak. And the RemainCo in this hypothesis retains its license to operate.

Yes. I'm not entirely sure I heard all that correctly, Christyan. I'm sorry for that. But license to operate of the RemainCo, it depends, of course, what you would call the RemainCo. But it -- but maybe back up a bit, and then perhaps also Jessica can comment on this, it is indeed increasingly difficult to -- in the environment that we are experiencing, and it was also referred to in Oswald's first question, with significant hostility and demonization of our sector. And I realize it finds its way also in the asset manager world and it finds its way in the asset owner world.

But let's also be very clear, the world still needs oil and gas. It's using oil and gas. As a matter of fact, it's using more of it at this point in time than it used to before, and therefore, it has to be provided. And I think, therefore, it is not only legal, it is legitimate and necessary that oil and gas products are being provided and they better be provided by companies that, first of all, know how to do it. have a very responsible attitude to doing so and indeed have a strategy to use some of that cash, not just to fund shareholder distributions, but also to transition the company to a better, a cleaner, a lower carbon slate. And that means that we are a company in transition.

Now some people don't like that. They say, well, I don't want to be part of this transition. I just want to only jump to those companies that never had to do a transition or that have already transitioned or whatever else. But the reality of it is, Christyan, then that is actually going to impede the transition as well. So in the end, the energy transition that we are talking about, and I'm here talking about humanity, not just for the investor universe, is going to be an energy transition that will only come about when companies with a scope, skill and scale like us actually make it happen and actually work with our customers to say, we can help you use different types of energy products. And if you have issues in terms of competitiveness, let's jointly work on the right policy framework that governments need to put in place to make all these things happen. So I do think there is a role for us in there.

Now you might say, "Well, that sounds like you are an NGO or a government. In the end, you just have to deliver returns." But then at the same time, I'm also absolutely convinced that we can deliver competitive returns in all these aspects of the energy system of the future. So that's why we have the strategy as we have it. I think it does hang together. I do believe, indeed, we are never done explaining that strategy and reemphasizing aspects of it. But that is what we believe in, and that's what we will be going for.

Thanks, Ben. Ben's covered it really well, but perhaps a couple of other points quickly. In terms of value creation, shareholder value, if we focus on the substance of our businesses, we have spent a lot of effort and energy over the last couple of years reshaping our Upstream business and our Upstream portfolio to have a high-value business that's very well run and very cash generative. So in the third quarter, our Upstream business generated some $5.8 billion of cash flow from operations. That's the highest we've seen since 2018 on a much lower production base. And that's a great example of how we've reshaped that portfolio for value over volume. So it's a great franchise, generating a substantial amount of cash.

If you look at our EBITDA for the third quarter of some $13.5 billion, half of that comes from our Upstream business. So we've got a really great business, highly cash-generative, high-value business. It's part of who we are as a company. We've got, I think, unique skills and capabilities in that space to responsibly provide oil and gas to the world. And so from a substance perspective, it's not obvious why you wouldn't want to have that in your portfolio in terms of who we are as a company and what we do well, but also in terms of funding the energy transition. The energy transition is going to need some -- anywhere from $2 trillion to $4 trillion a year, depending on who you ask, over the next 30 years. Our Upstream business is a source of cash for us to then fund the energy transition that's so needed.

So from a substance perspective, the last thing I'll say is that the integration points that Huibert raised, if you look at the Pernis refinery, our ability to bring hydrogen solutions to Pernis, biofuel solutions to Pernis and CCS solutions to Pernis, bringing that all together and bringing real solutions today in that space, we're able to do at pace because we've got the skills and the capabilities and the assets within our portfolio, and we can get all of those teams in the same room to work out all of the issues that need to be worked out to create these new business models of the future. And I think that is our source of competitive differentiation with respect to the energy transition, particularly for fuels.

We will now take our next question from Jon Rigby from UBS.

I have 2 actually. The first is on the Integrated Gas business. So I was looking back and it appears to have missed -- and this could be to do with poor forecasting, but it appears to have missed consensus earnings expectations 6 out of the last 7 quarters. You might argue that even the trading update at the end of September didn't quite capture all of what was going on. And so with some of your peers actually making very good money in the LNG space, I was just concerned, and maybe I'm looking for reassurance here, that what was a very strong, highly profitable business was there somewhat by virtue of the fact that you dominated the space. And that actually now it's become much more competitive and your sort of competitive positioning is not as good. And therefore, maybe we're a little too optimistic around its outlook and performance and maybe there are moving parts that perhaps even Shell doesn't quite or isn't able to capture. I remember a question maybe a year ago and asked whether there was a structural issue in Integrated Gas and you said there wasn't.

The second question is on buybacks. I see you've done sort of the thick end of $1 billion in the third quarter. Obviously, you only started in August, and August is a fairly thin month. So I imagine September was a decent month to do it. And yet you've not upped it into the fourth quarter. And I'm sort of conscious of the amount of CFFO you're generating and the sort of straight calculation of a buyback from that, plus the commitments around the ConocoPhillips proceeds. So can you just explain to me with the fact that you're only doing B shares, and I think this is the second largest B share purchase in any 1 quarter, how you are going to get the share buyback program done?

Great. Good. Thank you, Jon. So in terms of the Integrated Gas business and I think probably more specifically LNG, our Pearl asset, our GTL business is going quite strong and some of the best operational performance we've ever had, and that business is also contributing to the results. But it's on the LNG side, I think, is where most of the questions are, and I'd say this has not been the strongest year for the business. I remain very confident in the sector and very confident with our competitive positioning in the sector. I think there are distinct issues that have happened this year that we have the ability to manage and to have a very different future in terms of what's happened this year, not going into 2022 and beyond.

What's happened, I think, are a couple of things. In the past, if you look in 2018 and 2019, we had a couple of really outstanding quarters. And when we had those quarters, I cautioned the market that these were really outstanding, and this shouldn't be considered kind of the base expectation for the business, I think that did -- that may have set expectations a bit high. But coming into 2021, in the last couple of quarters, the issue has really been around supply issues in our trading part of our business. So this isn't an asset business. As I tried to make the distinction before, our assets are performing well. Prelude is ramping up. It's enjoying this current price environment. And so you see some $500 million of incremental earnings over Q2 associated with our assets, and that's a combination of performance and obviously, the market.

But on the trading side, the real challenge has been on supply issues coming out of Peru, Trinidad, Nigeria, which I've mentioned before. Peru is up and running again. So hopefully, that's behind us. And as I said, as we look into 2022, hopefully, we can get the overall supply position where we need it to be with some of these other assets addressing the issues, although most of those issues have -- are related to third-party gas suppliers and aren't really Shell issues. So I think, structurally, there is absolutely not an issue. I think we have a very competitive business.

Last year, the business did really well through a very difficult market, and that was, to a large extent, because of the strength of our trading business supporting in a very difficult market and propping up, if you will, earnings and cash flow. This year, unfortunately, not getting the same benefit from it. But again, this is really driven by supply issues and not kind of the fundamentals of the business. And as Biraj asked earlier, some of the fundamentals, I'd say we're feeling a bit more optimistic in terms of the price outlook as we look over the coming years, absolutely, but also in terms of how the contracts are being priced against Brent. So I'd say there's some optimism in terms of that business going forward as well.

In terms of the share buybacks, you had a couple of questions there. Why -- given the strength of the cash generation, why didn't you do more buybacks, I think is the first question. A couple of points to raise there. In the last 90 days, we've announced some $10 billion of incremental distributions to our shareholders, if you consider the dividend, the share buybacks and then the proceeds that we're going to distribute out of Permian. So feeling we're in a good place in terms of returning cash to our shareholders through various forms of distribution. That's the first piece.

The second piece is, in the second quarter, we talked about or I referenced that we would then look at the next tranche of shareholder distribution increases in Q4. And so we'll be doing that in the fourth quarter. Of course, we have our annual dividend increase, but of course, we'll be looking at the 20% to 30% range. We'll do that looking back on the prior 12 months. And of course, the results of this quarter will feature in the decision-making that we have in the fourth quarter in terms of increasing shareholder distributions.

In terms of the pace, there is some constraints in terms of being able to execute that as efficiently as possible. That's why we're buying the B shares currently. And in terms of trying to do that as fast as possible, there's various tactics that we're looking at, and we'll be more clear certainly once we get the proceeds in with Permian in terms of how we expect to execute that as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

We will now take our next question from Martijn Rats from Morgan Stanley.

I've got 2 questions as well. In the sort of -- in the short sort of prerecorded video that you put out this morning, there was a comment about the reduction in the production of traditional fuels from 100 million tonnes a year to 45 million tonnes a year by 2030. And perhaps, I sort of quite sort of missed something, but I was wondering if that is sort of a new indication or an existing one. It wasn't sort of quite so clear to me. And also, I find it quite an intriguing number because it's sort of a 55% decrease between now and 2030. If you look at the IEA net-zero scenario, clearly, the most stringent scenario that the IEA has, there is a sharp decline in oil demand, but it's only 30%.

So it sort of sounds like you're sort of shrinking this business faster, very substantially faster than even the IEA net-zero scenario sort of requires, which makes it quite interesting. And so I was wondering if you could put these things in context. And also how much of this decline is for the disposals and will still be operated by other people versus actual closures? Because frankly, if companies like Shell are looking to shrink these businesses even faster than a net-zero scenario requires, it does make you wonder who, at least on the time frame between now and 2030, is going to produce these fuels. So that was one.

The other one is a much smaller question. But in the statement, there is a comment that there were comparatively lower earnings contributions from renewables and energy solutions in North America. And I was wondering if you could say a few words sort of precisely what is in that business and what was driving that and also how material the lower earnings contribution is there.

Good. Thank you, Martijn. I will quickly answer the final question you had, and then hand over to Huibert. The reduction in margins on our renewable and energy solutions business in North America is really a delta versus the second quarter where we had a bit of a makeup posting, if you will, in our margin that came through, and then we also had an increase in reserves related to our mark-to-market positions. So it's not a kind of fundamental issue with the business. It's really a delta versus the second quarter and not a signal in terms of the underlying performance of the business. Huibert?

Yes. Thanks, Martijn. The -- going from 100 million to 45 million fuels by 2030 is an existing target. We mentioned it in SD21. And it's -- to a certain extent, it's the transformation of our refinery to energy and chemical parks. It includes the divestment of some of the refineries we've done over the last 1.5 years. Martinez, (inaudible), working on Puget mobile, Deer Park and PCK. But it also includes the conversion to a terminal. So what we're doing in Tabangao and what we're thinking of a Convent refinery in the U.S.

In Bukom, we actually took out a crude distiller. So we fundamentally reduced quite significantly the fuels capacity. But importantly, it's not just taking out the fuel capacities, is what do you actually do? And in my view, in a customer-backed world, we should make products and services based on the needs of customers, which are not only commodity driven, but we're able to price on what that product actually does. So the technology is in the product.

So what we will replace it with in the energy and chemical parks, which we will remain, will be more performance chemicals, more [basals] for lubricants, more bitumen, which will give you more ratable margin. So in the chart that you were able to see, you see indeed the reduction in total fuels production, but you see quite an increase in margin. So this is actually a quite well business-driven opportunity as I look at it, working from the customer back, and then determining per sector what are exactly those needs and how do we make them more ratable.

Great. Thank you. And Martijn, I realized that the number on the res was about 200 million for the quarter. You'd asked that number.

I may ask one thing, sorry, I forgot to -- Martijn, I was just thinking. One of the things we also said in SD21 is we're replacing actually part of that fuels with low-carbon fuels. So we're going from 3% of our total transport fuels to 10% low-carbon fuels by 2030. So that's an increase of 8x of the total production, which includes 2 million tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel, which we also mentioned. So the blends will increase, and therefore, the fuels consumption will decrease.

Great. Thank you.

We will now take our next question from Christopher Kuplent from Bank of America.

I've got 2 as well, if I may. The first one, a bit generic, but considering that we are going into COP26, the EU is still debating around its taxonomy. Maybe I can ask a generic question. What do you think is a successful or an unsuccessful COP26? And does that matter at all whether it's a successful or not successful outcome as you define it for your energy transition strategy? So maybe asking as the Devil's advocate, would you argue some of your commitments actually expose you if COP26 fails to reach global consensus, whatever that is?

And if I may, just briefly, as a second question, you mentioned the IPO of Raizen. And Ben, was that one of your earlier concerns around additional Chinese walls because isn't that exactly contradicting your point of view on integration in biofuels marketing? Is this a very specific case given your local JV partner? So I just wanted to hear a firmer message on whether you're thinking about doing many more of these IPOs around the world or whether that's actually a specific exception to your point about vertical integration.

Thanks, Chris. And Jessica looks at me, so I'll answer the first one. Huibert is probably best placed to talk about Raízen IPO. I think on COP26, well, of course, there's a lot of talk in the market, what does it mean? What do we expect and what do we hope for? I'm actually working on a LinkedIn piece that I will hope to put out tomorrow, what are my hopes for COP26. So by all means, take a look at that as well. But I would say that come probably down to 3 things, Chris. So first of all, yes, we do need more ambition. Everybody talks about it, of course. We need to do more because the current ambitions add up to something much more than 2 degrees C.

You could argue that's all very bad. But you could also argue, that's how it was supposed to work, isn't it? So we need to ratchet up ambitions to the point that we are in the right place. And maybe if you look before COP, in Paris, we -- COP21, we were looking probably at 5 degrees. So in that sense, we have made progress, but we need more progress. We need more ambition in that respect. That's point number one.

Point number two, we need more real action because it's not just good enough to have more targets and ambitions out there. There needs to be real action on the ground. And in my mind, quite a large part of the action increasingly needs to focus on the hard-to-abate sectors. So these are things that are somewhat outside the nationally determined contributions as well. Take aviation. No one single country is going to take care of aviation unless we collectively put mandates in place. The same is true for shipping. The same is true for steel, cement, heavy-duty industry. Even heavy-duty road transport probably needs to have a sort of super national approach.

And that's what we mean by a sectorial approach that we are strongly advocating for. And therefore, my second point is more action along the lines of individual sectors. And we are putting out today a set of policy recommendations that we believe governments need to embrace in order to drive all these different sectors forward with our own decarbonization road map.

The third one, I would say, is finally operationalized Article 6 of the Paris agreement. We are not going to get anywhere close to 2 or 1.5 degrees if we cannot do it with the help of the market. Meaning to say that we need to be able to exchange emissions, to trade emissions. You cannot have a situation where people in, say, Canada say, "We don't like to export LNG to China to shutdown their coal plants because it gives emissions here." We need to be able to take a global view on how we manage emissions, and that effectively means that we have to have an operational Article 6. That has been lacking for 5 years. If it doesn't happen, I would be very disappointed. So these are my 3 points, Chris.

Thank you, Ben.

Do you want me to...

I think...

Oh sorry, sorry, my apologies.

That's okay. Just on Raízen. Raízen, first of all, is clearly already a joint venture ,50-50 between us and Cosan. We put 8% in the IPO. It was a very specific case because we needed to have the funds, particularly also from the Cosan side, to be able to fund our growth. So we were able to raise $1.3 billion in the market. What did we do with that? Well, we actually acquired Biosev, which was the #2 player -- domestic player and which increased our total capacity from the agriculture side with 50%. So from that perspective, it was specific. What is very important, however, that what we place were nonvoting shares. So we remain fully in control of the joint venture we have.

Thank you, Huibert.

We now take our next question from Alastair Syme from Citi.

Just one question. Just coming back to the LNG trading. Just to clarify, you're saying because of supply issues, you having to buy cargoes in the market to fulfill contracts? Or were you able to declare force majeure? And I guess if you were having to buy cargoes, does that mean in the fourth quarter, given that it looks like spot price is going to average even higher than third quarter, are there -- that's even going to be more of a headwind ?

Thank you, Alastair. Indeed, unfortunately, we did have to buy cargoes in the market. And so that is the negative impact that you're seeing is the incremental cost associated with those cargoes. That will continue into the fourth quarter as well. However, there is the upside as well on the price that's still coming through on the cargoes that we are receiving, both from a trading side and from an asset side as well. So it -- we will get some of the upside, but we will have some incremental costs, we expect, because of the supply issues in the fourth quarter as well.

We will now take our next question from Lucas Herrmann from Exane BNP Paribas.

Just as a comment, I do think there's a really good opportunity for the narrative to change around the space, not least given where energy prices and what's happening in terms of energy prices and to some extent as a consequence of the Third Point position. But leaving my sentiment aside. Jessica, I wanted to ask you about derivatives and the impact of derivatives and how we should think about their potential reversal and indeed, how perhaps we should think about them in the context of CFFO and your calculations on returns?

And the second question, I'm sorry, I'm going to go back to LNG. And it's really about when I look at the asset base, a number of the fields are old, are declining. I'm wondering the extent to which -- to what extent the issues that you're having with supply are very simply also around issues of providing gas to plants, whether it's Trinidad, whether it's Nigeria, whether it's North West Shelf, so on and so forth, all of which are placing -- are going to place increasing pressure on the business going forward given the maturity of much of the asset base.

Good. Thank you, Lucas. So in terms of derivatives, a couple of important or big movers there and just a little bit of context, there are derivatives in relation to our LNG business and there are derivatives in relation to our gas supply business. For the third quarter, what you see happening from a mark-to-market perspective and from a variation margin perspective is a mix of those things. On balance, the variation margin for the quarter for the group was a positive help of $4 billion. All things being equal in terms of the forward curves that determine that variation margin amount, we would expect that to unwind over the next coming quarters, yes?

But that's if everything is -- if everything moves in tandem, and of course, these things don't always move in tandem. But I think it's a reasonable expectation that, that $4 billion, if things generally stay as they are today, we would expect that to roll off, if you will, in the next couple of quarters.

Even if that's the case, I would just highlight that that's $4 billion, we would still then have over $13 billion of cash in the quarter. So I think very strong cash generation that you would see. And of course, depending on what's happening with prices, you can also have a positive effect from a working capital perspective. So there's a lot of different moving parts in the cash flow. So I would look at the fundamentals or the underlying cash flow, if you will, of $13.5 billion in terms of the substance of the business, which is very strong, and that will certainly flow through regardless of what happens on the variation margin.

In terms of the LNG business a bit more and what might be driving some of the supply issues. As I said before, it's not about the performance of our own asset portfolio, if you will, and it is about a couple of our sources of supply that I've referenced in prior quarters, Trinidad, Nigeria, those gas supply issues, which is -- third-party supply issues are playing into that. We're working solutions and continue to do so. But of course, we also have other sources of supply. We contract supply. We are having some more supply coming into the portfolio next year from a contractual perspective. So there's other levers in terms of getting access to supply from contracts, while we continue to work solving the gas issues and the reliability issues that we've seen in some of the supply contracts for the trading business. I hope that helps.

We will now take our next question from Jason Gabelman from Cowen.

I'm unfortunately going to ask another one about LNG, so apologies. But I'm trying to understand how the supply impacts flow through the volumes because you're essentially saying you're backfilling your trading volumes. So is there -- are we going to see an indication in the volume number when kind of things normalize for you in the business? Or is it just that sales number stays flat, but the margin moves higher? And then connected to that, is it possible to provide a figure for the lost profit opportunity in the LNG business during 3Q as a result of these disruptions?

Good. Indeed, it's -- so I'm trying to -- a simple way of answering the first question. So on the LNG side, we will see more volumes coming through in the fourth quarter, but we're also seeing some of our mark-to-market positions will also be coming through, and we're still expecting some supply disruption. So while we'll be having increased sales happening and higher prices positively affecting the assets in our business, we will still have supply issues that will negatively affect us in the fourth quarter and in the fourth -- first quarter, assuming the price moves as they currently are today. The second question in terms of -- sorry, the second question on...

The opportunity loss, money loss...

The opportunity lost, yes, indeed. So for the third quarter, the impact was around $300 million for the quarter in terms of the supply impact. So that's obviously a material hit for the quarter. And again, as we work through that, that should be sorted hopefully by first, second quarter of next year, and that will hopefully come back to our bottom line once we get those issues resolved.

We will now take our last question from Paul Cheng from Scotiabank.

Two questions, please. First, I think, is for Huibert. Do you have a sensitivity that you can help us in every dollar per Mcf change in the natural gas price, how that impact on your refining margin capture on a per barrel basis as well as in your refining of [gas] on a per barrel basis? That's the first question.

Second question, I think, Jessica, we have heard some rumor talking about LNG Canada may have seen some course over run and there's a dispute between the consortium and their EPC. Can you confirm whether that is the case and that where we are in terms of the course? If I can sneak in a final one. On the $7 billion of the additional cash return from the Permian sales, is there a timeline that say when that will be executed? Is it for 12 months after the deal completes? Or that don't really have a time line?

Good. Huibert, do you want to start with the first question?

Yes. If I understood correctly, sensitivity in change of the gas price and its impact on the refinery margin. What I mentioned earlier is that we constantly are optimizing the impact of gas prices and then determining what slates we can make, and we do that and then the different inputs we have in feedstocks between our economics and scheduling teams in all our refineries, together with the various trading teams, and that happens on a daily basis. What obviously the exact impact is, that will depend very much on the locality of the slate and the different feedstocks that we have. So I don't have an exact number for that now. The only thing I can assure you is that obviously, we're optimizing that. And believe -- I firmly believe that within the industry, our cooperation and integration between our energy and chemicals parks and our refineries is top-notch and our trading and supply business is so top-notch that we do that very effectively.

Thanks, Huibert. Paul, I believe the question was about the LNG plant being constructed in Canada, if I understood you correctly. And...

It's the pipeline.

Pardon?

The pipeline.

Oh, it's the pipeline. So there are discussions on the pipeline ongoing. We've had some challenges on the pipeline. There's nothing to kind of announce at this moment in time. We're working with our contractor. So you can also direct inquiries to TransCanada as well, who is constructing the pipeline. And there's no updates at this moment in time in terms of where that stands. What I would say is that the project itself is going very well. I think we've reached 50% of completion. Very pleased with the performance outside of Canada in terms of the supply chain and within Canada, particularly during the pandemic. So really, really pleased with the overall progress that the project has made to date.

In terms of the $7 billion cash return, we're looking to do that. Of course, we need to get the proceeds. The deal needs to close. We're hoping it closes in the fourth quarter. Once it closes and we receive the proceeds, we're looking to distribute that to our shareholders as quickly as is possible but also as efficiently, which means at the best price in terms of -- and the best method in terms of getting that back to our shareholders, as I said, as quickly and as efficiently as possible. We're looking at different ways of doing that, but hoping to complete that very quickly as we go into 2022.

With that, I believe that was the last question. So I'm going to now say thank you to all of you for joining us today and for your questions. I hope this has given you insights into our strategy delivery, absolute emissions reduction targets and our performance in the third quarter of 2021. I wish you a pleasant end of the week, and I hope you and your families stay safe and well. Thank you.

And this concludes the session. Thank you for your participation. You may now leave the call.