Shell Not Rushing to Buy Assets to Boost Reserves

Shell does not have to buy assets anytime soon, chief executive officer Wael ?Sawan said on Tuesday, as analysts and the company itself have said that the supermajor needs to fill a resource gap over the next decade.

Shell needs an exploration breakthrough or a big merger after its oil reserves fell to the lowest levels since 2013, according to analysts.

The so-called ‘reserve life’— denoting how long Shell’s proven reserves can sustain production at current levels—has dropped to below 8 years, significantly lower compared with Exxon and TotalEnergies, each with reserve lives exceeding 12 years.

Shell is now facing a production shortfall of 350,000-800,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) by 2035 as its aging fields can no longer maintain output at current levels.

Shell aims to grow production across its combined Upstream and Integrated Gas business by 1% a year to 2030, sustaining material liquids production of 1.4 million barrels a day through to 2030, according to its strategy.

At the Capital Markets Day in March 2025, Shell’s Sawan said that the company had a resource gap to 2030 that was close to 100,000 barrels per day.

At the Q4 earnings call last week, the executive said that the $2 billion of deepwater bolt-on acquisitions in 2025 and improved recovery from some reservoirs have largely plugged that gap of 100,000 barrels per day.

Yet, Sawan acknowledged that Shell still has a resource gap to fill to 2035.

“But we want to make sure that the bar continues to be high there. And we have a few years to be able to fill that gap,” the executive noted.

“So this is not ignoring the issue. But this is derisking what we can see in front of us, what we can control and making sure that we deliver on our commitment to our shareholders to do it in a highly accretive way.”

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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