Shell plc

Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company, headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange. A core component of Big Oil, Shell is the largest investor owned oil company in Europe, third largest globally behind ExxonMobil and Chevron, and among the world's largest companies out of any industry. Measured by both its own emissions, and the emissions of all the fossil fuels it sells, Shell was the ninth-largest corporate producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 1988–2015.

Shell was formed in April 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company of the Netherlands and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company of the United Kingdom, with 60 percent of stock ownership under Royal Dutch. The merger was arranged by Calouste Gulbenkian, a British-Armenian oil magnate. The combined company rapidly became the leading competitor of the American Standard Oil and by 1920 Shell was the largest producer of oil in the world. Shell first entered the chemicals industry in 1929. Shell was one of the "Seven Sisters" which dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. In 1964, Shell was a partner in the world's first commercial sea transportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG). In 1970, Shell acquired the mining company Billiton, which it subsequently sold in 1994 and now forms part of BHP. In recent decades gas has become an increasingly important part of Shell's business and Shell acquired BG Group in 2016.

Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration, production, refining, transport, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation, and trading. Shell has operations in over 99 countries, produces around 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day and has around 44,000 service stations worldwide. As of 31 December, Shell had total proved oil and gas reserves of 8.123 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Shell USA, its principal subsidiary in the United States, is one of the company's largest businesses. Shell holds 44% of Raízen, a publicly listed joint venture with Cosan, which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company. In addition to the main Shell brand, the company also owns the Jiffy Lube, Pennzoil and Quaker State brands.

Shell is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and had a market capitalisation of £186 billion on 24 July 2026, making it the third largest company listed on the LSE and 69th globally. In terms of the revenue, Shell generated $284B in 2024, a significant decline over a decade, from $451B in 2013.