Shell has said it will continue to hand investors bumper payouts despite reporting its third consecutive year of falling profits following weaker oil prices.
The oil company reported a 22% fall in adjusted earnings to $18.5bn (£13.6bn) for 2025, down from $23.7bn in 2024, owing to steadily falling global oil market prices. It is the third year in a row that the company has reported falling profits since making almost $40bn during the 2022 energy crisis.
Its earnings for the last quarter of the year were $3.25bn, missing analyst expectations of $3.5bn and well below the $5.4bn reported for the previous three months.
Despite the weaker profits the company handed its shareholders a 4% increase in dividends and $3.5bn worth of share buybacks – its 17th consecutive quarter of at least $3bn of buybacks.
Meanwhile, its net debt climbed to $45.7bn by the end of the year, or almost 21% of its total capital, up from $41.2bn at the end of September, as oil prices continued to slide.
The international price for crude fell below $60 a barrel for the first time in almost five years at the end of 2025 as political leaders began to inch towards a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, which could increase the glut in the global market if western sanctions were lifted on Russian exports.
Overall, oil prices slumped by almost 20% in 2025, marking the biggest annual loss since the Covid pandemic, and the first time that the oil market has recorded three consecutive years of annual losses.
Wael Sawan, Shell’s chief executive, said the year showed “accelerated momentum” for the business, with “strong operational and financial performance across Shell”.
“We generated free cash flow of $26bn, made significant progress in focusing our portfolio and reached $5bn of cost savings since 2022, with more to come,” Sawan added.
Shell’s lucrative investor payouts have continued despite the falling oil price and as the company reportedly consults with shareholders over plans to increase Sawan’s pay packet by at least £4.6m a year alongside one of the most generous long-term incentive plans in the FTSE 100.
Mark van Baal, the founder of activist shareholder group Follow This, said Shell’s steadily declining profits despite rising global oil and gas demand had exposed “weakening fossil fuel economics” in the energy sector.
“We expect that every shareholder wants to know how the company will create shareholder value in a declining oil and gas market,” he said.
“Even shareholders who don’t care about climate risk and only care about the value of their shares in Shell, should be worried about Shell’s stubborn disregard of market forces such as the exponential growth of renewable energy and electric vehicles.”
Shell also attracted criticism from green groups. Fossil Free London staged a mock “profits party” protest outside Shell’s headquarters yesterday where it accused the company of fuelling the climate crisis in pursuit of profit.
Maja Darlington, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, said the oil company’s profits “could cover the UK’s £2.8bn climate damage bill from floods, fires, storms and droughts almost five times over”.
“It is reprehensible that Shell is allowed to act with impunity. Governments must make these oil giants pay for the climate chaos they have created,” Darlington added.
