Welcome to Shell's IG Business Strategy Update 2022. We will start with the presentation from Wael Sawan, Shell Director of Integrated Gas, Renewables and Energy Solutions. Please note that the session will be recorded. Following the presentation, we will welcome your question for the question and answer session. Wael will be joined by Steve Hill, EVP, Energy Marketing. To ask a question you need to be dialed in via the phone line. Can you press star one to be added to the queue. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star two. I will now hand over to Wael and Steve. Please go ahead.
Thank you for that, John, and let me add my welcome to everyone to this Shell Integrated Gas Business update. As John already introduced, but quick reference also for those of you who didn't join us earlier for the LNG outlook, my name is Wael Sawan, Director of Integrated Gas, Renewables and Energy Solutions. Indeed, as John said, I'll be joined by Steve Hill, our EVP, Energy Marketing for the Q&A. Now, before we dive in, let me just first show our cautionary note as we always share relating to any forward-looking statements. With the benefit of just 100 days in my current role, here are three key messages that I hope to bring across in this session. First, natural gas and LNG have momentum in the worldwide energy system. As Steve presented in the LNG outlook call, this momentum is here to stay.
Second, we have a truly advantaged and leading LNG and GTL businesses that will sustainably deliver material value to Shell. Third, with the strong foundation that we have, we aim to supply lower and zero carbon gases to support our customers achieve their net zero ambitions over time. Let's start on this slide with the first of these three points, the momentum of natural gas. Shell's strategy of Powering Progress is to profitably and purposefully accelerate the transition of our business to net zero emissions by 2050, in step with society's progress towards achieving the Paris climate goals. This is a huge and long-term task for an energy business, and we do know that Shell must and will change. How we exactly change will depend on where we can find opportunity and business value as our customers move towards net zero.
This means a much larger role for low carbon energy like wind, solar, hydrogen, and advanced biofuels in the future. As we all know, there are also parts of the global economy that cannot be easily decarbonized. Think of heavy duty transport and the production of steel, cement, and chemicals. Gas will play a crucial role in these hard to electrify energy demand sectors now and well into the future. Gas will also play a pivotal role in coal to gas switching for electricity. Gas emits around 45% lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal over the whole life cycle when used to generate electricity. Natural gas and LNG are the logical partner for renewables as they enable reliable, flexible energy. Because of all these advantages, the future of gas looks bright.
LNG demand, for example, is expected to grow steadily and reach 700 million tons by 2040 from 380 million tons in 2021, particularly in Asia and other emerging markets. This demand growth, the continued tightness of gas supply and the current energy crisis clearly all show that the world needs more investment in gas projects and liquefaction capacity, not less. For a long time to come, our integrated gas business will continue to deliver the energy that the world needs and generate material shareholder value. Now, let me tell you how this business is delivering on these opportunities. To start with, we have a great portfolio, especially in LNG. In 2021, we supplied 64 million tons of LNG, around 750 cargos, making up 17% of the worldwide LNG delivered. This makes us a world leader in LNG.
We create value with this unmatched portfolio and its high level of network integration. We are a major supplier of LNG to China, Japan, and Korea, and have a fast growing global LNG bunkering network. But it's not just LNG. We, of course, also have a world-class GTL business that turns gas into high quality liquid fuels, base oils for lubricants and other liquid products. These products are applied in electric vehicles, in data centers and battery cooling, generating attractive margins. By leveraging our marketing and trading businesses, Shell sells many of these differentiated GTL products through our advantage supply chains to our global customers. We have a lot more examples of how we create value from our integrated gas positions by leveraging the broader Shell group.
Our gas business in Australia serves global markets through LNG export, but critically, it also serves the Australian domestic market. When we combine this with our renewable generation, our trading, and our marketing businesses, it shows how Shell's uniquely positioned to provide a broad integrated energy offering to Australian customers. Increasingly, this offering will allow our customers to further reduce their carbon footprint. This also includes independently certified carbon credits, which we generate from projects that protect nature and restore the environment in Australia. We also use such credits for our carbon compensated LNG cargos. In 2021, Shell delivered 16 of these cargos to Asia and to Europe. This was more than half of the total number of the carbon compensated cargos that were delivered in the world. We signed the world's first, and until today, only carbon compensated LNG term contract with PetroChina.
We use many more solutions and technologies to help our customers decarbonize, like carbon capture and storage or bioLNG from waste. In our German Rheinland energy and chemical park, for instance, we are planning to produce bioLNG made from manure. Now moving from our integrated portfolio to our operational performance in 2021. We've seen a number of our assets performing well. QGC in Australia and Pearl GTL in Qatar, for example, performed excellently. Pearl, which is an asset that's close to my own heart, had more than 90% availability and the highest value uplift from GTL product on record. A major turnaround is currently in progress on one of the Pearl trains, which is the largest turnaround ever executed at Shell's operated assets. The turnaround of the other Pearl GTL train is planned for 2024. We also had our challenges in 2021.
Our supply of feed gas was constrained mainly in Trinidad and Tobago and Nigeria. I'm happy this improved to some extent in the fourth quarter, and we are moving in the right direction again. We currently expect overall 2022 liquefaction volumes to be above the 2021 level. Prelude started last year with successive record levels of monthly production. We were happy with this performance after all our hard work to stabilize such a complex asset. However, we had to temporarily suspend production after a power failure in December. We're doing all we can for a safe and stable restart so we can resume production. How did our portfolio perform financially in 2021? Our integrated gas business continues to deliver strong results with our unique Trading & Optimisation capability maximizing value. We demonstrated this in 2021, especially in the fourth quarter.
Even though the supply issues experienced in previous quarters continued to some extent, we were able to overcome these and capture unique optimization opportunities generated through the scale and the flexibility of our LNG trading portfolio. We delivered more LNG cargos into Europe to mitigate cash shortfalls, and with European gas prices overtaking Asian prices, we were able to benefit financially from such optimization opportunities. That brings me to the future. Our current integrated gas business is doing what we said we would do and is on the right trajectory, but we're not yet where we want to be. We have opportunities that we are pursuing to do even better with our existing assets, but also to position our growth portfolio to one with even stronger returns with lower carbon emissions. Let me expand on that a bit more.
For our capital spend, we need to be even more focused with a continued emphasis on value over volume. We have a capital budget of $4 billion-$5 billion a year in the short to medium term. We're making good progress on our two LNG capacity expansion projects under construction. In LNG Canada, LNG Canada surpassed recently the 50% completion mark last October after three years of construction. The project remains dedicated to have the first cargo by the middle of this decade. At NLNG, Nigeria LNG's Train 7 project, we experienced COVID-related delays since the final investment decision in 2020, but have moved into full execution mode in May 2021. NLNG is doing what it can to help mitigate the impact of COVID on the schedule. Overall, I'm happy with the progress with construction now firmly underway.
Both these projects are competitively positioned for LNG growth markets in Asia. The same goes for most of our long-term project funnel. We have several attractive expansion and backfill projects, a limited number of greenfield LNG projects, and several promising new low carbon gases projects in early stages of development. For the pre-FID projects, we have an expected average internal rate of return of between 14% and 18% and a unit technical cost below $5 per million BTU, with most of these projects clearly having lower costs than the average in the industry. These are good numbers, but you'll understand that we strive to push the IRR to the higher end and to push the unit costs down even further. The long-term role of gas depends on efforts to abate emissions and develop cleaner pathways for gas.
This is why we continually try to reduce the carbon intensity of our new projects. Take LNG Canada currently under construction. It'll run on hydropower and is set to deliver the lowest carbon intensity LNG in the entire industry. Another area of focus is managing methane. Methane leaks damage the environment and damage the case for natural gas. 2022 needs to be the year of action on methane. We're already cutting emissions in our own operations at both Pearl GTL in Qatar and QGC in Australia. Recent improvements have significantly brought down methane emissions. We're also showing leadership to drive reductions across the entire gas industry through initiatives like the Methane Guiding Principles and the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership to improve transparency and reporting of methane emissions from operated as well as non-operated assets.
Shell is delivering on its target to keep the methane emissions intensity from its own oil and gas operations below 0.2% by 2025. We will strive to retain our strong position in LNG by continuing to develop new markets and growing our portfolio of supply positions. For GTL, we'll continue focusing on operational excellence as well as margin optimization, and for both LNG and GTL, we will strive to reduce our own emissions and those of our customers. We can deliver the energy that the world needs, help the world on the path towards net zero emissions, and create superior value for our shareholders. With that, let's go to your questions, and if I can ask you to keep it to one to two each so that everyone has the opportunity. John, can we please have the first question?
Thank you. We will take our first question from Biraj Borkhataria of Royal Bank of Canada. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you for my question. The first one is just on your statement of sort of the world needs more investment in gas. When I think about the Shell top-down climate emission targets, it looks very difficult to add liquefaction capacity, in particular with a sort of limit on absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions. Because we're not looking at gas versus coal here. We're looking at gas in absolute terms, and Scope 1 and 2 for LNG is quite high. Having said that, you know, with your oil business, you sell and trade four times more product than you produce. And for gas, the ratio is roughly two times.
I guess if you wanna grow this business into that market, which is clearly growing, should we expect it to move to a sort of capital light model where you have more offtake capacity and as a ratio of your total portfolio? Maybe could you just talk about the actual benefits of owning liquefaction capacity and why it makes sense for Shell to own that? Just to follow on to that, it's on Qatar, again, can you talk about the benefits of for you know entering that from a liquefaction perspective and also just from an offtake perspective, from a trading perspective? Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Biraj. If I understood your second question, it's more about the upcoming opportunity in Qatar to access the North Field expansion, which I'll pass on to Steve in a moment to reflect on. On the first question around the considerations for Scope 1, 2, and 3, for that matter, when it comes to investments in Integrated Gas. I think firstly to recognize the Scope 1, 2, 50% reduction plays across our entire portfolio for Shell. Of course, what we have already announced is, for example, the classification of core and lean in the upstream part of the portfolio, and so you'll see us divest some of the higher Scope 1, 2 assets there.
You've also seen the significant portfolio right-sizing in our refineries, which will also move our Scope 1, 2 emissions well below where they are today. What we will expect to do is to continue to see growth for our LNG, for our liquefaction assets. Of course, it's going to have to be, as much as possible, abated growth. Expect new opportunities that are significantly reliant on renewable energy or renewable generation to be able to electrify those facilities. Expect us, for example, in a place like Qatar, to continue to look at what we can do both operationally to reduce our Scope 1, 2 emissions, but also to consider projects like carbon capture and sequestration.
This is really looking across the patch to see what we can do to bring down our Scope 1 and 2 emissions in our existing assets and to design new assets that have much lower Scope 1, 2 footprint. When it comes to Scope 3, and you point out, indeed, we sell twice as much as we produce in LNG, but four times what we produce in oil. We have a carbon management framework that we introduced a year or two ago. What that does is it's going to drive a real focus on the value per carbon molecule. Really allowing us to see where we're going to be able to...
As we think about dollars, we will also think about carbon footprint in the way that we allocate our capital. LNG on a carbon molecule basis is very, very attractive in the overall scheme of things, and therefore will likely take precedence over some of the less valuable molecules that we sell into the market. We look at that on a regular basis as we look at our investment opportunities. Maybe Steve, if you want to talk about the LNG project in Qatar.
Yeah. The question also mentioned third-party LNG supply, and we're continuing to grow our position there. Not all our purchases get announced, but we entered into a new long-term purchase from the U.S. Gulf Coast from one of the projects there last year on a kind of industry first liquid hub netback pricing mechanism. Again, we're staying at the leading edge of the commercial innovations in the industry. We also did several medium-term purchases. The ones from Qatar were announced, but several others that weren't announced, but we continue to grow our supply position through third-party supplies. In terms of the upcoming opportunity in Qatar, you know, it represents an investment opportunity in the most competitive new source of LNG coming into the market.
Obviously that's something that would be attractive to Shell and many of our competitors. In terms of the offtake arrangements, we'll have to wait to see whether we're successful as a partner and offtaker in that project. Regardless, we have a very successful ongoing relationship with QatarEnergy, and we have existing long-term contracts, existing medium-term contracts, and we work tremendously well together to optimize our combined businesses and portfolios, and we'd expect that to continue.
Thanks for that, Steve. Biraj, thank you for the question. John, can we get the next question, please?
We will now move on to our next question from Irene Himona from Société Générale. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. My first question, where you referred to your targeted project economics, double-digit IRRs. Can you just remind us of your pricing assumptions behind that, please? Secondly, if you could talk about a very large but non-operated asset, and that's Gorgon in Australia, which has had various issues. Do you have grounds for expecting a normalization of that operation, please? Thank you.
Irene, thank you for the questions. We don't disclose the underlying assumptions for it, but what I would say is it's mid-market assumptions typically. I would characterize where we are right now at the higher end of the market. We don't look at one specific number when we take those investment decisions. Typically, what we'll do is we'll look at the low premise, a high premise, and then a mid premise, and we'll test a few things. We'll see the economics at the mid premise, we'll see the resilience at the low premise, and we will look at whether we can achieve upside at the high premise. Looking at the risk-return profile of that investment, we then sort of choose where we want to deploy scarce capital.
What I would say right now is at times like this, you enjoy those high prices and therefore projects that allow you to get some of the fiscal upside are particularly beneficial at this point in time. I think in Gorgon it is a really big complex project. Now, I'm sure this question is better handled by the operator directly, but what I would say is we continue to be pleased with that investment that we have. It has had some challenges, but you know, these are operational challenges that are not foreign to the LNG world. We learn from them, we improve.
I think the operator is doing a good job by making sure that any of the issues that are discovered are very quickly rectified across the trains and then they drive the business forward. I don't have any particular concerns around the future of this project. Irene, thank you for the question. John, can we get the next question, please?
We will now move on to our next question from Roger Read of Wells Fargo Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. Good morning. Still over here. Sorry. I was just curious, and this question came up in the previous LNG discussion, but what are the true monetization opportunities for delivering low or zero carbon LNG? I know we talked about a lot of different ways to make it, but what are the paths we should pay attention to in terms of how, you know, we should expect you to start, let's say, increasing margins or at least maintaining margins on LNG deliveries that deliver on a low carbon solution?
Thank you for that, Roger. Steve, do you wanna take a crack at that?
Sure. I think when you think about LNG, you have to think about the full value chain for LNG. The reality is about 20% of the emissions from the LNG business come from the upstream gas production, liquefaction, shipping part of the value chain, and about 80% come from the market activity from actually burning the regasified natural gas. When it comes to the upstream part of the value chain, the main opportunities that you have are things like electrification of the liquefaction project in the upstream with renewable power, as we're doing in the LNG Canada project with the hydroelectric power, carbon capture and storage for the fuel used in the liquefaction process, and operational efficiencies.
When it comes to the customer end of the value chain, that's where we've seen less progress so far, and that's why, you know, carbon capture and storage will again be very important to capture the emissions from burning the LNG, and that's where we probably have more work to do as an industry. What's been very positive in 2021 is the increased transparency that we're seeing over the actual level of emissions from the LNG production and the full value chain. Because first of all, you have to identify you have a problem, you have to measure it, and then you can set about reducing and eliminating, and that's where the industry is going now.
Good. Thanks for that, Steve. And Roger, I think that if I understood correctly your question, that addressed a part of the question. If I also heard you, correct me if I'm wrong, there was also an appetite to sort of probe a bit into some of the lower carbon gases more generally. For example, hydrogen, bioLNG, and whether we can see margin opportunities growing for that. Any thoughts on that, Steve?
There's clearly appetite for those products. bioLNG is something that has very attractive pricing today. It's just a very limited supply availability, and there's a big scale-up required to meet the customer demand for that product. Hydrogen is a commodity that has many attractive features. We've talked about the four sectors of energy demand. Well, hydrogen fits into all four very well. It provides the flexibility and reliability needed in power generation. It could be used in transport, in industry and in heating buildings. There is demand for hydrogen, clearly, or certainly interest in hydrogen. It's just very early in the evolution. Hydrogen needs to come down the cost curve in the same way as renewable power has recently and to scale up to meet that future demand.
When we look at the future of energy demand, people often confuse energy demand and electricity demand, and they say the future is all renewables. Well, the future of electricity will be driven by renewables, but energy demand is far broader than electricity, and molecules will still be needed in the energy mix. Therefore, you know, we have a very strong and sustainable LNG business, but we will be decarbonizing that business over time and introducing lower emission forms of gas supply to our customers.
Thank you for that, Steve. Roger, the only thing I might add there is, of course, every region is moving at its own pace. What's interesting is there's a compliance angle here, but there's also voluntary commitments being made. You see more and more appetite for people to go after some of those scarce low carbon or zero carbon gases. We're going to go through what typically happens in a nascent development of a new product. I suspect in the coming years, as supply starts to catch up, we'll see a bit more of a normalization.
We're very keen to leverage the customer relationships we have today and the demand that we see to be able to help those customers as they slowly step into lower carbon LNG, or lower carbon gases. Thanks for the question again, Roger. John, if I can go to the next question, please.
Thank you, sir. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that is star followed by one to queue for a question, star one. We'll move on to our next question from Giacomo Romeo of Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question on greenfield LNG projects. You mentioned in the past that after LNG Canada, you weren't looking to do more greenfield LNG. You do have some greenfield LNG in the project list you have at the end of the presentation. Tanzania has been in the news quite recently. You also have Abadi there. It's obviously you have demand growing basically through the end of the 2030s. I just wonder how do you reconcile and how do you see the space for greenfield projects going forward, especially given that you have a number of brownfield opportunities that surely offer a better return.
The second is you talked about the strong value uplift provided by GTL project in Pearl GTL. Can you provide a little bit more details in terms of how much incremental value has it generated in last year so to give a sense of what actually has been the financial impact of GTL on the business. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Giacomo, for the questions. Let me take both of those. Firstly, on greenfield LNG project, I think the reality is we're not ideological for or against new greenfield projects. Ultimately, we are from a group perspective, when we think about capital allocation, we're trying to maintain the discipline. Around the $4 billion-$5 billion is what we think Integrated Gas should be spending, and therefore we need to be disciplined and efficient in the way we are deploying that capital. Clearly, as I think you intimated, backfill opportunities as and where they are available, are always very attractive and typically are the ones very quickly in the money. When it comes to new LNG opportunities, we will go selectively after those.
As Steve mentioned earlier, where you also have opportunities for others, for example, to invest in the liquefaction, like in a place like the U.S., and where we can, in essence, provide the offtake, why allocate scarce capital to something that others are willing to do themselves? We're trying to be much more pragmatic around where capital allocation is required for greenfield projects, recognizing, of course, these tend to be long payback projects and so on and so forth. They're not easy to do. Where we think there's an opportunity, we will selectively go after it. We continue to churn the portfolio, see which ones we want to go after, and where it makes sense, we will do so.
We don't give a breakdown of the numbers around the GTL uplift, partly, of course, because if you think about it from a 100% basis, there's a whole fiscalization between QatarEnergy and ourselves. Suffice it to say that the sorts of margins in these uplifts can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Where do these attractive margins come from? I mean, think about high-quality base oils, where our GTL feedstock or GTL product feedstock GTL base oils goes into high-performance lubricants. Think about GTL naphtha, where you have low-sulfur feedstock for crackers that we can supply as the appetite for that grows in the market.
Think about GTL gas oil, which can be blended with normal conventional diesel, but with lower aromatics and lower cetane number, allowing for improved combustion from a GHG emissions perspective. All those are markets that we continue to nurture, and all those are markets where our customers are willing to pay a bit of a premium to have that product. The task of the team is to do a couple of things. One, to continue to drive those margins up, and more and more to place the product in markets where you don't necessarily have to burn the product. Think about GTL normal paraffins that we put it as a feedstock into the linear alkylbenzene chain.
Our ability to divert it from a combustion demand basis is something that the team's looking at. That allows us to manage both the carbon footprint but also enhance the margin that we achieve. Giacomo, thank you for the question. John, can we go to the next question, please?
Yes, of course. We'll now move on to our next question from Lydia Rainforth of Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, good afternoon. Thank you for a brilliant presentation. Actually, I was gonna say two questions, but three, if I could. The first one, just coming back to the low carbon LNG and this idea of nature-based offsets, how comfortable are you with those portfolio of nature-based solutions that you have in terms of being able to provide transparency to customers about where they come from and the verification of it? The second one was just around the LNG Canada and Trains three and four as to obviously when you think about the carbon budget for Canada, how does that fit in to it overall. The idea of can you actually do LNG Canada Trains three and four effectively.
The last one was just obviously last year there was an issue around the reliability of Shell's own volumes coming through. Well, when you've come in to look at the business, is there anything systematic that you are thinking about or that you're concerned about? Just kind of from that side. Thanks.
Thank you very much, Lydia. Do you wanna take the first question, Steve, around comfort with the carbon offsets?
Yeah, absolutely. It's a very, very important issue that you raised, Lydia, because when you sell offsets, what you're effectively selling is trust. The customer doesn't actually get anything they can put their hands around. They're getting our assurance that we are taking actions that move the amount of CO2 from the air into the ground, that we say we will do that. Therefore, it's very important that we first of all have the highest quality processes and standards to make sure we operate that at a very high quality and that we have transparency to our customers over how we do that. A lot of our sales to our customers, it's not just the Shell promise, it's specific information we're giving them on the specific projects where the offsets are coming from.
Historically, we used to buy most of our offsets from various project developers, but increasingly we are developing our own projects in multiple jurisdictions around the world, in Indonesia, in Africa, in South America. We have quite a large portfolio of Shell-owned equity offsets where we set the standards and we provide that transparency. We also issued a publication late last year explaining exactly what Shell's standards were for the monitoring verification of carbon standards.
More recently, we have led various industry activities to establish a common language and a common standard for carbon offsetting to make sure that it's absolutely clear when you buy a net zero cargo, it's offsetting the Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions from the production and consumption of that LNG rather than just a part of the value chain.
Thanks, Steve. Lydia, of course, just if you want to reach out to our IR team just to make sure that we provide you some of that material 'cause it's a good read. Let me go to your second and third questions. On Trains 3 and 4 , yes, the $4 billion-$5 billion can accommodate the second phase of LNG Canada, if we so choose to progress it. Clearly the focus right now is on making sure that we see the continued progress that we hope for on LNG Canada Trains 1 and 2. There we continue to be pleased with the momentum that's there and hopefully see that start up towards around middle of this decade.
On the reliability of Shell-owned volumes, I think there's a couple of things here. The challenges we saw last year had different elements. From a Trinidad and Tobago perspective, there was a shortfall in some of the supply, and we're trying to bridge some of that ourselves, but also other suppliers are doing it like BP and others. On our side, we commissioned a project last year, Barracuda, which is now supplying some of the gas that's required. Colibri is one that is hopefully going to start up later this year, and that will again augment some of the gas gap that's there. Getting more and more confident, and we're looking at future phases of other developments.
Manatee is another one into the future that hopefully can bring gas to Trinidad and Tobago and more structurally solve some of the challenges there. On the Nigeria side, I think it was a confluence of COVID and security issues all meant that we were challenged. What do we learn from it? I do think we need to be able to have more supply ready to go as and when required. I think that's a learning for us, rather than being too close to the requirements of the plant. It is challenged in Nigeria, as you can imagine, for multiple reasons.
I think the other big thing we've learned, and we've actually set up a team in Steve's shop to do this, is that our Trading and Optimization team, even if you tell them a cargo isn't coming, but you tell them well in advance, they will find opportunities to be able to optimize around it. What happened in the second and third quarter that challenged us was the news came late, not allowing the team to really optimize around it. I think that's a learning we've taken, and Q4 showed some of the benefits of that. Thank you for the questions, Lydia. John, can we go to the next question, please?
Yes, of course. We'll move to the next question from Christopher Kuplent of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you, and hello again. Wael, just wanted to take the opportunity to ask you, I think this is your first presentation in your new role, whether you have seen things within Integrated Gas that you'd like to address with your experience, best practice that you've learned in your roles, deep water, and upstream. Considering that we have Steve here, obviously you are, I guess, giving us more disclosure with Renewables and Energy Solutions becoming a separate reporting line. I wonder whether you think really Trading and Optimization in particular should be such a closely held secret, given the quarterly volatility in cash flows in particular, whether you can't think of ways to improve disclosure here as well within Integrated Gas. Thank you.
Thanks for those questions, Chris. Let me take the first one, and if you want to reflect on the second one there, Steve. What would I change? I think just to start off, Chris, just to recognize I was in Integrated Gas sitting on Martin's leadership team a few years ago when I was looking after Qatar. Coming back, just amazed by the quality of people and how much that organization has grown and strengthened over time. Really, I think sort of cementing the absolute conviction that this is a jewel in Shell's crown. Very, very proud of what this business is doing. You know, what I would say, Chris, is a couple of things. I think firstly, I reflected this internally, so I might as well share it externally.
When I came in, I reflected to the team the fact that I was surprised that to some extent it looked like we had lost our mojo after our second quarter results and third quarter results. A business like this is going to hit a bump in the road every once in a while, but the quality of the people, the quality of the assets, I think is unparalleled. I was glad that fourth quarter helped rejuvenate some of that mojo. I do think a core part of what we do going forward is to continue to ensure that the pride in what we are doing here every single day is not forgotten.
Because sometimes when you pick up that morning paper, there's just too many negatives around fossil fuels, forgetting about the incredible value that they continue to contribute in terms of not just climate change support, but also energy security as well as energy affordability. The only two other reflections I'd give you quickly are, I think there's two opportunities we can play further, and those are ones that are dear to my heart. One is, I do think, as we discussed earlier, a bolder move into low and zero carbon gases is going to be critical to be able to build resilience for this business into the future. You've heard a bit about that today. Expect to see more. I think the second bit is this shouldn't be seen as an Integrated Gas business and a renewable energies business.
This is an IG res business. There is a lot more that unites us than divides us. We're looking at how do we truly create the end-to-end opportunities that allow us to optimize for our customers in support of their decarbonization journey. I think that's an incredibly exciting strand if we can fully unlock what it might offer. Steve, did you wanna talk about T&O?
Yeah. A few themes that kinda come to mind. We have to be careful with the information that we share in our Trading & Optimisation activity because we are awkward. It's very much a series of trade-offs. We need to share information with our investors. We need to maintain our competitive advantages and not share our secrets to the many people who are trying to replicate our business model. We need to be respectful to our suppliers and customers. What we try to do is balance all these different conflicting pulls on us and share as much information as we can without actually destroying the value that we love to talk about. Secondly, as Wael just highlighted, this is an integrated business. When we lost cargoes in the summer, the whole business felt the pain together.
It wasn't just the trading business, we all felt that pain. Actually, there is a lot of diversification that comes from the integrated business that we have. There is a lot of risk management that comes from the integrated business that we have. If you think about Wael's business, we have a LNG production business, and the margins in that business are driven by the absolute price level. We have a marketing business, and the margins in that business are driven by price spreads. We have a trading activity, and the margins in that business are driven by price volatility. Now, any one of those could be high or any one of those could be low. It's very unlikely that price levels and price spreads and price volatility will all be low at the same time.
By combining these into an integrated model, that allows us to manage our risk and deliver the good sustained performance that you saw in the presentation.
Thank you for that, Steve. Chris, thank you for those good questions. John, let's take the next question, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, that is star one. If you wish to queue for a question, star followed by one. We'll take our next question from Paul Cheng of Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Two questions, please. First, with the third-party supply issue you faced last year, will that have any implication on your future business model or, I mean, historically, when you develop an equity LNG operation, you may have a long-term take or pay contract, say in addition, say, in excess of 80%. But with the third-party supply, should that mean that in the future, the percentage of your own equity production should have a lesser percent of the long-term contract and more for the spot to provide you more flexibility? Or that you don't think that yes, really is that desirable for you? The second question is that I think, previously some media report talking about some infrastructure issue on the LNG Canada. Can you give us an update there?
Change in the business models. I think, you know, it's important to recognize and to look at this LNG business in a much longer time horizon than the last two, three quarters. This business has been incredibly resilient. Of course, you will always have gas supply issues. Sometimes you have liquefaction issues. You know, we overcome those, and we learn from them. Typically, what I would say is as much as possible, having access across the entire value chain in as close of a percentage as you can, helps ensure that wherever value migrates at any point in time, you are capturing that value.
In general, take our LNG Canada investment that you just referenced in the second question, we would look to be able to at least assure ourselves that we are not caught up by the vagaries of one part of the market, let's say, the gas supply. We would want to have enough on the gas supply equity side to be able to make sure that if gas prices go up there, we benefit from them while maybe disadvantaging the midstream or vice versa, depending on where prices go. We're not in the game of necessarily taking undue risk. We're in the game of creating integrated value chains that we can leverage as part of the broader portfolio. On the issues around LNG Canada, I think a few things to say.
Firstly, we're just what is it now? Three 3 years and three and four months since we've taken FID on that project. Just last October, we crossed the 50% completion on the site in Kitimat. Good progress, and this was despite some real challenges with COVID with a lot of the modules coming from various yards in Asia being challenged. A credit to the team, I think some heroic efforts to be able to, by and large, continue to be on track. I think the challenge that you're referencing is more related to the pipeline, the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Multiple reasons for that, which I won't get into in detail. This is a question better addressed to CGL themselves directly. Suffice it to say that we do have some concerns around the cost of the pipeline.
We're having deep discussions with TC Energy, who oversee the pipeline and therefore trying to see how we can mitigate some of these cost increases. So far we see TC Energy getting back on the ball and making sure that they are able to move at a pace that ensures that we have pipe before we have the plant. The last comment I'd make on that pipeline, some of you might have picked up in the press, the incredibly sad events of a couple of days ago where we strongly condemn some of the violence that was shown.
Thankfully, no one got hurt in Houston, British Columbia, when a specific part of the pipeline around the Morice River, 20 or so people attacked those who were earning a living at night. Thankfully they all came out well and safe. You know, these events are unfortunate, and I'm sure that the TC Energy and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will be able to address the issues sufficiently. Thanks, Paul, for the question. John, if I can go to the next question, please.
It appears there are no further questions over the audio, sir. I'd like to turn the conference back for any additional closing remarks.
All right. Thank you for that, John. Thank you for helping us through this. Colleagues, thank you for joining us. Steve, thanks for the partnership on this. It's been a grueling five or six hours, I think, today, but hopefully it was helpful. As always, you know, we're available through the IR team as well to address any broader questions that you might have, which we didn't pick up today. Thank you for your faith and your trust in our Integrated Gas business. It is a really special business for Shell, and hopefully, it's one that you continue to see the delivery from. Wishing you all a safe and good rest of the day, and look forward to catching up with many of you in person soon again. Thank you.
This concludes the session. Thank you for your participation. You may now leave the call.