Our Upstream businesses explore for and extract crude oil and natural gas, often in joint ventures with international and national oil companies. We liquefy natural gas by cooling and transport it to customers across the world. We also convert natural gas to liquids (GTL) to provide cleaner burning fuels. Upstream markets and trades natural gas and power in support of our businesses. We extract bitumen – an especially thick, heavy oil – from mined oil sands and convert it to synthetic crude oil. We are also developers of wind power as a means to generate electricity.

Our Upstream businesses are grouped into two organisational units: Upstream Americas, covering the Americas, and Upstream International, covering the rest of the world with major interests in Europe, Asia/Middle East/Russia, Australia/Oceania and Africa.

Our Downstream organisation is made up of a number of businesses. Collectively these turn crude oil into a range of refined products, which are moved and marketed around the world for domestic, industrial and transport use. These include fuels, lubricants and bitumen.

Our manufacturing business includes Refining, Supply and Distribution. Marketing includes our Retail, Business to Business (B2B), Lubricants and Alternative Energies and CO₂. Our Chemicals business has dedicated Manufacturing and Marketing units of its own. We also trade crude oil, oil products and petrochemicals primarily to optimise feedstock for our Manufacturing business and to supply our Marketing business. Our CO₂ organisation is responsible for coordinating and driving CO₂ management activities across the company.

The global network of Shell Trading companies encompasses Shell’s trading activities in every major energy market around the world. We also manage one of the world's largest fleets of liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers and oil tankers.

Our Projects and Technology organisation provides technical services and technology capability in upstream and downstream activities. It manages the delivery of major projects and helps to improve performance across the company.

We deliver differentiated technical information technology for Shell and drive research and innovation to create tomorrow’s technology solutions. Projects and Technology also houses Safety & Environment and Contracting & Procurement as these are integral to all our activities.