The real blow from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs is not higher supply chain costs but the uncertainty they inject into the global economy, disrupting the demand-supply balance and weighing on investment decisions, Shell’s global chief of projects and technology said.
“The primary effect is on our supply chain. It becomes more expensive and for a company like Shell it’s something that we could actually deal with,” Robin Mooldijk, president, projects & technology at Shell, told ET in an interview. “But the bigger (effect) is even on the investments. Does it change the business climate and the supply-demand balance to the extent that—a little bit cheaper or a little bit more expensive project, doesn’t really matter—do we want to do it or not.”
He pointed to Shell’s global chemicals business where demand has been “impacted”, and the speed of recovery remains uncertain.
Shell, one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies, is also contending with another headwind: low oil prices. Crude has stayed below $70 a barrel for months, with forecasts of sub-$60 levels next year amid a supply glut. “We have an incredibly resilient upstream portfolio,” Mooldijk said. “So, while (low oil price) hurts, it doesn’t hurt fundamentally at that level where we have to disappoint shareholders.”
In India, Shell owns an LNG terminal in Gujarat, a small fuel retail chain and renewable platform Sprng Energy. But its most consequential and expanding role comes from its global capability centres (GCC) in Chennai and Bengaluru, where most of its 13,000 Indian employees are based.
Chennai houses Shell’s global monitoring centre for assets worldwide. “(It) allows us to optimize across different assets. Because typically if assets are on a different continent, they don’t really talk to each other. But now you see that there’s similar work done by people sitting next to each other for different assets,” he said. “Now some of our competitors have observed that and there’s even a third party offering it.”
Bengaluru is home to one of Shell’s three key global R&D hubs. “Bangalore for me is probably the key to commercialisation of technology,” said Mooldijk, who visited the city last week for Shell’s Changemakers of Tomorrow initiative, which brought together startups, academics, suppliers and industry executives around innovation in energy.
India’s GCC is no more just a cost arbitrage opportunity. “It may have started off a long time ago as cost efficiency. We’re so way beyond that. We reached the point that we cannot do without our presence in India and the same applies to our IT organisation,” Mooldijk added.
Shell’s collaboration with Indian universities and supply chain equipment vendors are helping it focus on developing frugal technologies that can enhance competitiveness, he said.
Several global oil companies have recently scaled back renewable ambitions amid market challenges, even as the US administration backs fossil fuels. “It’s the market that drives how fast we go. The will is there and especially on technology development, we will continue to develop, but we still need to have a market,” Mooldijk said. “If nobody buys it, what are you going to do with it?” He said green hydrogen is unlikely to reach price parity with conventional hydrogen this decade, given it currently costs about five times more and would require fundamental technological breakthroughs to achieve a steep cost reduction.
