Shell eyes more income from retail forecourts

LONDON: Royal Dutch Shell Plc wants 20 per cent of income from its retail forecourts to come from vehicles that don’t burn diesel or petrol, as the company anticipates an accelerating transition to clean energy over the coming decade.

Shell set up its first hydrogen refuelling station in the United Kingdom earlier this year and would install its first electric car charging point later this month, said top executive of downstream business John Abbott.

By 2025, he expects these new operations supplying cleaner fuels, including natural gas, to make up a fifth of retail earnings.

The downstream businesses of Shell have been an important source of profit during the oil market’s three-year downturn, but there are growing signs that demand for petrol and diesel will start to wane as people switch to new forms of transport.

“We are talking to a lot of companies at the moment with a view to significantly extending the number of countries” where Shell had electric charging stations, said Abbott on Monday.

Shell planned to have 10 charging points in the UK by the end of the year, said Abbott.

It also wanted to expand nonfuel sales of items such as sandwiches and coffee to all 80 countries in which it operated, from about six in 2013, he said. Bloomberg