COVID-19: Shell’s global response

Colleagues

We have taken many steps to protect the health of our colleagues, including requiring or encouraging office-based staff to work from home, depending on the advice of local authorities.

For people working on our platforms offshore, or our facilities onshore, we continue to enforce social distancing and carry out health screening, and have procedures in place to allow the safe evacuation of any suspected cases of COVID-19.

Similarly, in our global network of retail stations, we are enforcing social distancing, and carrying out deeper cleaning. We have also put in place other protections such as screens for till operators.

Our confidential counselling service is available to help colleagues experiencing the psychological impact of the pandemic, and we continue to provide extra online resources to help people manage their physical and mental well-being.

In India, which continues to face a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we introduced mandatory three days off work in May for all staff to support their well-being and to help them meet family needs.

We have increased remote health care and testing, as well as hospitalisation coverage, for all employees and their immediate families. We are securing ambulance services when people need them. We have implemented a voluntary hospitalisation insurance programme for parents and parents-in-law of all Shell staff. And we have covered the cost of vaccinations for all staff and their families.

Customers

We have business continuity plans in place at each of our operating sites to sustain our operations and supply chains, so that we can continue to provide vital energy products to countries and communities, businesses and individuals.

Across the world, our forecourts are helping to keep crucial services, such as ambulances, emergency vehicles and deliveries, on the roads.

Shell is doing many things to keep our customers safe at our retail sites. These include carrying out enhanced cleaning operations and social distancing.

In India, we have introduced daily essentials such as bread, milk and flour, and safety essentials such as masks and sanitisers, at all Shell Select outlets to help our customers make as few trips outside their homes as possible.

We have also formed partnerships with delivery apps like Dunzo, Zomato and Amazon Food for non-fuel retail products to ensure our customers have access to essentials without having to leave their houses.

We are working with business customers to meet demand for essential hand and surface cleaning products. At our manufacturing plants at Pernis in the Netherlands and Sarnia in Canada, for example, Shell continues to produce isopropyl alcohol (IPA) to meet increased demand. This chemical ingredient makes up about half the content of hand-sanitising liquids.

Communities

We are supporting communities and efforts to halt the spread of the virus.

For example, Shell has contributed a $10 million donation to COVAX, the global initiative to make vaccines more widely available.

Shell has also contributed $1.7 million to six companies providing electricity in India, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda to support customers in financial difficulty because of the pandemic.

Through these companies’ existing customer networks, so far Shell’s grants have reached over 800,000 people.

Separately, Shell has donated $3 million to the COVID-19 Resilience Fund set up by Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian and development organisation working in more than 40 countries.

In India, we have sourced 140 oxygen concentrators for staff, contractors and communities and supported more than 126,000 people with more than 35,000 relief kits and 14,800 meals.

We have helped people working on the front line of the fight against the virus in other ways. At more than 15,000 of our retail sites, in more than 30 countries, we have donated over 2 million free food or drink items to more than 1.5 million health-care professionals such as nurses and doctors, as well as truck drivers and delivery people who are vital to maintaining supplies.

We have offered free fuel to health-care providers and ambulances in countries including Brunei, Bulgaria, Mexico, the Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Russia and Turkey.

And we have donated more than 1.3 million pieces of personal protective equipment such as face masks, face shields, gloves and goggles to hospitals, front-line workers and vulnerable communities in countries including Brazil, Canada, Italy, Philippines, and the USA.