5-minute Q&A with Andrew Smith

Singapore has long been a strategic hub for global energy markets. This short Q&A session will explore key insights from Andrew Smith, President of Trading and Supply, and a member of Shell Executive Committee, interviewed by Harvonne Yap, VP Products Freight, Trading and Supply where Andrew break down what we do in Shell trading and supply and how Shell Singapore will play a pivotal role.

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 to hear their insights on how SG's expertise, connectivity and world-class capabilities will shape Shell's future in global energy trading.

It's been quite a journey to get here and quite a bit of involvement in Singapore on the way through to that journey. I started studying chemical engineering, joined Shell and spent my first 10 or 11 years doing really technical work. Indeed, in my 11th year, I designed the catalyst cracker reactor that is in Singapore.

And then I moved to the commercial side of Shell. I ran Shell's marketing companies in the South Pacific before I joined Trading the first time to look after the African product trading activity, and I loved that. So I've spent probably 15, 20 years working on the trading side of Shell, but been lucky enough to work in different parts of Shell - on the upstream, the marketing side, the refining side, trading side, a little bit with chemicals, and this had given me a set of experiences, and was really helpful for doing my job.

Trading and Supply does a wonderful variety of different activities. On one hand, we are the central nervous system for Shell. We market all the equity production of crude oil, gas, LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) and electricity for Shell. We take care of working with the refining business to optimise the way that we run refineries and we supply the marketing arms of Shell wherever they are with cost competitive, quality supply. We're one of the world's largest energy traders.

But in addition to that, we also take care of the transportation activities that involve moving fuels around the world, whether that be trucking, terminal, moving fuels by pipeline or by rail. And we run a number of commodity marketing companies and we take care of Shell's marine activities. So whether that be designing a new ship to move liquid CO₂ or helping supervise moving oil rigs around the world, Trading and Supply is involved in all these things.

I think the energy transition represents both challenges and opportunities for Trading and Supply. It starts by listening to our customers and what they're trying to achieve. We also have to understand what governments are trying to achieve.

And if I think about the different things that we do - we are one of the world's largest supplier, marketer and blender of biofuels and whether that be ethanol or biodiesel, and increasingly sustainable aviation fuel. We are also very active in the power markets. Last year, we sold around 306 terawatt hours of power, which increasingly comes from renewables. That's about five times the power consumption of Singapore.

But with that comes this challenge with intermittency, which we look to address to things like batteries. And we are investing into a number of flexible assets. And then there's the role of gas in the energy transition. We are the world's largest marketer and trader of LNG. Getting even larger with the acquisition of Pavilion Energy right here in Singapore and gas will have a very large role and it's probably our key contribution to the energy transition.

Trading has been an important part of Shell's DNA ever since Shell started, and the trading activity that Shell does in Singapore has been a big part of its activities ever since and it's going to remain so. Singapore is one of our key trading hubs around the world, along with London, Houston, Rotterdam, and Dubai.

We have talents here to run such a sophisticated market and the right infrastructure around, what you need to run a trading business is right here in Singapore. We've been growing our LNG bunkering business here and we are the largest LNG bunker in the world and Singapore is a really important part of that.

And also, Singapore is a terrific place to run our Asia Pacific trading activities from this very integrated region and there is a continuing growth of energy demand - it’s really important to be here to grow this business.

Life and work is an adventure. It's what you make of it. I think it's really important to keep pushing yourself to develop and grow. With the world being as complicated as it is, it's really important to learn to collaborate and become good at collaborating.