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Fuels, bitumen and lubricants
We have the largest single-branded retail network in the world – around 44,000 Shell service stations in more than 70 countries. Every year we sell around 158 billion litres of fuel and we supply the greatest market volume of lubricants. We manage the impact of our fuels and lubricants on people and the environment – from production, to use and disposal.
Our long-term approach to the product stewardship of our refined oil products covers product design through to removal from the market. Safe handling of our products includes understanding where and how they will be handled. We may work with others in industry to address a shared challenge.
Evaluating lubricants
We focus on managing the hazards of the formulated products we market during their product development phase. We have established an assessment system to help formulators and product managers evaluate the HSE aspects of components used in the finished lubricants.
The assessment process incorporates a list of restricted and limited substances as part of the hazard assessment evaluation.
The list prohibits the use of certain substances in our new product development: it is a high priority for us to replace them in any legacy products.
One benefit of this process has been to minimise certain impacts of REACH, the European regulation on chemicals, as our assessment process results in using substances that do not require authorisation. Using our assessment process has led, for example, to lead-free greases, phthalate-free fragrances and phthalate- free plasticisers used in our air freshener products, and self-imposed limits on permissible levels of certain chemicals such as boric acid and diethanolamine in our metal-work products.
We also consider sustainability during the product development phase. We developed, for example, an energy efficient hydraulic fluid, Tellus EE, in 2009. This product has helped companies to reduce the energy consumption of their hydraulic machinery by an average of 8%.1
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1 Average of customer-reported and Shell-managed evaluations. Improvements in energy efficiency will vary depending upon the application, operating conditions, current product being used, the condition of the equipment, maintenance practices being adopted and the intensity of hydraulic power used.
