BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 15
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
For cash capital expenditure, Royal Dutch Shell plans to spend between $19 and 22 billion per annum in the near term, Trend reports citing the company.
In addition, the company expects operating costs to be no higher than $35 billion and to deliver a divestment program totalling around $4 billion a year in this period.
“We remain committed to our progressive dividend policy and focused on targeting AA-equivalent credit metrics through the cycle. Subject to Board approval, we aim to grow the dividend per share by around 4 percent every year. Once our net debt level has reached $65 billion, we will target the distribution of 20-30 percent of cash flow from operations to shareholders, and may choose to return cash to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share buybacks,” said Shell.
Once the company has achieved this level of shareholder distributions, additional surplus cash will be allocated between further disciplined capital investments to deliver its strategy and further debt reduction to strengthen the balance sheet.
“We fully support the Paris Agreement’s goal to keep the rise in global average temperature this century to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. We announced a long-term target to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050, in step with society. This includes a target to be net zero on all emissions from the manufacture of all our products – (our Scope 1 and 2 emissions) – by 2050, and also net zero from the end use of all the energy products we sell (Scope 3 emissions). We aim to reduce the net carbon intensity of energy sold by 6-8 percent by 2023, 20 percent by 2030, 45 percent by 2035 and 100 percent by 2050, in comparison with 2016.
We expect that our total carbon emissions from energy sold will stay below 2018 levels. As a result of COVID-19, there continues to be significant uncertainty in the macroeconomic conditions with an expected negative impact on demand for oil, gas and related products. Demand or regulatory requirements and/or constraints in infrastructure may cause Shell to take measures to curtail or reduce oil and/or gas production, LNG liquefaction and utilisation of refining and chemicals plants. Sales volumes could be similarly affected. Such measures could impact our earnings, cash flow and financial condition,” said the company.
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