Shell

Shell plc is a British publicly traded multinational oil and gas company headquartered at Shell Centre in London, United Kingdom. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). It is one of the oil and gas "supermajors" and by revenue and profits is one of the largest companies in the world, ranking within the top 10 of the Fortune global 500 since 2000.

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. It also has renewable energy activities, including biofuels, hydrogen, wind and solar. 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 2019, Shell had total proved reserves of 11.1 billion barrels (1.76×109 m3) of oil equivalent. Shell Oil Company, its principal subsidiary in the United States, is one of its largest businesses. Shell holds 44% of Raízen, a publicly listed joint venture with Cosan, which is the third-largest Brazil-based energy company by revenues and a major producer of ethanol.

Shell was formed in 1907 through the merger of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, based in the Netherlands, and the "Shell" Transport and Trading Company, based in the United Kingdom. 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 has a primary listing on the LSE and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of £216 billion at the close of trading on 27 June 2019, by far the largest of any company listed on the LSE. It has secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange. Until its unification in 2005 as Royal Dutch Shell plc, the firm operated as a dual-listed company, whereby the British and Dutch companies maintained their legal existence but operated as a single-unit partnership for business purposes. From 2005 to 2022 the company had two types of shares: A (code RDSA) and B (code RDSB). In January 2022, the firm ended the dual share structure, moved its headquarters to Britain, and changed its name to Shell plc. The Shell logo is known as the "pecten" after the sea shell Pecten maximus, on which its design is based; the current version of the logo was designed by Raymond Loewy in 1971.

As of February 2020, Shell's largest shareholder (A and B shares combined as a percent of the company) was the Netherlands Central Institute for Cashless Securities Transactions with 21.19%, ahead of Guaranty Nominees Limited in second with 18.03%, BlackRock with 7.14%, and The Capital Group with 4.99%. According to the CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017, when taking into account its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions (emissions caused by the public and other companies using its products), Shell was the ninth-largest corporate producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 1988–2015. In 2018, Shell announced it hoped to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner.