Windfall tax under Labour will throttle green investment, says Shell chief Sawan

HIGHER taxes under a Labour government would risk throttling investment in green energy infrastructure, the boss of Shell has warned.

Speaking as the FTSE 100 giant posted record quarterly profits of nearly $9.6bn (£7.6bn) from $9.1bn a year earlier, chief executive Wael Sawan said the company wants to be a major investor in renewable power but needed “the right ecosystem to be able to do that”.

Mr Sawan said: “I would hope any government coming in would see that and support that.”

He was responding to comments by Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel

Reeves, and shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband, who yesterday both called for higher windfall taxes on energy companies.

Ms Reeves accused the Conservatives of refusing to “bring in a proper windfall tax on oil and gas giants”.

Mr Miliband, meanwhile, tweeted that Labour would bring in the tax.

The Government has already imposed a profits levy after the Ukraine war sent oil and gas prices soaring, raising the effective tax rate on North Sea producers from 40pc to 65pc.

It is expected to bring in about £5bn annually in its first three years, with Shell predicting it will pay around £1bn over the levy’s lifetime. However, critics say the tax does not go far enough, after the world’s five largest oil and gas companies – Chevron, Exxonmobil, Shell, BP and Totalenergies – posted combined profits of nearly $200bn in 2022.

And Shell’s announcement that it would hand $12bn back to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks in the first half of 2023 stoked further calls for a bigger tax raid.

Mr Sawan, who took over as chief executive in January, suggested that higher taxes now would hurt the development of future energy schemes and that it was “important to recognise” that investments being made by the company today would often not provide returns until a decade later.