Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Shell LNG Outlook 2024. Thank you all for joining us today and for taking an interest in LNG. My name is Cederic Cremers. I'm Executive Vice President of LNG, and I'm joined here today by Steve Hill, who's our Executive Vice President for Shell Energy, which includes our organization for LNG marketing and trading. Before I get into the detail of just make sure we can get the next slide here. Perfect. I think we got it now. Before we go into the detail of the outlook, just wanted to share a cautionary note here. The legal text that you see on the screen here is basically because we'll be making forward-looking statements here today, so please take note of this text. In addition, just a reminder that what we'll be sharing here today is basically third-party independent data to which we've also added Shell analysis. So it's really talking about the LNG market in general and not about Shell specifically in terms of the trends and the projections that we'll be talking about here today. So today we'll be going through three parts of the LNG outlook. So first of all, I'll talk a little bit about basically what trends we see in the energy transition and which policy trends we see and what impact they will have on gas and more specifically LNG demand. Then Steve will look at 2023 and look at how the market stabilized after 2022, as well as share some of the observations of what we expect will come next in the market in the years ahead. So in Section One, really want to talk about the role of gas and LNG as a reliable and flexible solution for energy, and as the world decarbonizes, how that role will grow, and particularly how it will grow in industry, in buildings, and emerging Asia. So if we look at the outlook for the global gas market, then what we really see is a tale of two markets. On the one hand, what you see here is a number of the OECD markets, whether it's Europe or Japan, which have already peaked in terms of total gas demand in the previous decade. But at the same time, we see significant portions of the world, whether it's Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which combined are actually 80% of the world population, where we don't expect the gas demand to peak until in the 2040s. Of course, these are also the key regions that are actually growing LNG demand and where we see LNG demand grow in the years ahead. Because of that, we also see LNG demand not peaking till the 2040s and possibly even beyond the date that gas demand will peak. As you see in the middle chart, you see that particularly the gas demand is going to be coming from the non-power sectors. Also on the right-hand side, we see that out of each of the natural gas sections, that particularly LNG will be growing the fastest. A little bit after 2040, we actually see LNG overtaking pipeline imports and having a larger share of the global gas market. Let's go first to the main engine, Asia. Fundamentals, of course, are strong in Asia: increase in population, economic growth, and also an increase in the per capita GDP, all driving across Asia. I think if we look at this chart here in terms of where we see the natural gas demand growth in China and in India, we see it particularly coming from industry and from buildings. But in Southeast Asia, we also see it coming from power, markets that have traditionally relied on domestic gas production. And we see there LNG stepping in to offset declining natural gas production domestically. As that declines and as fields go off-plateau, that LNG steps in to fill the gap. Within this, we all see that, particularly as I mentioned earlier, that LNG is going to play a key role. And one of the realities is that the majority of Asia simply does not have access to pipeline imports. Most places, other than China, don't have that option. So again, on the right-hand side, you really see that the key growth is coming from LNG in that market. So let's take each of those in turn and start with industry. What we're seeing maybe globally right now is that only 20% of primary energy demand is met by electricity. If you look at the total demand for industry worldwide, it's about 40% of global energy demand. Currently, only about a quarter of that is met by electricity, and a percentage that is not expected to increase rapidly for the industry sectors. If we really want to be serious about decarbonizing, and if the world wants to move forward in energy transition, then it must tackle decarbonizations in ways other than electrification. The example that we have up here is the Chinese steel sector. You see the total emissions from the Chinese steel sector there at the top. That is actually only the steel sector, not total industry in China. You see that it's larger than Japan, than the emissions of all of Japan. It's larger than the combined emissions from the top three countries in Europe, being Germany, U.K., and Turkey. Also, you can see that it's larger than the global aviation and almost the same size if we take the global aviation market and international shipping together. Now, if you look in the right-hand side of this chart, this is actually put together by industry experts around what might be the ways in which China seeks to decarbonize that steel sector and how it can therefore meet the combined goals of peaking coal usage by 2030, as well as China's net-zero ambition by 2060. Looking at what the options are, it's predicting about a third of that to come from coal-to-gas switching and about a third of it coming from energy efficient and electrification, which are both supported by gas as well. So it's clear from this that we see a huge role for gas to play in terms of helping to decarbonize industry. This is also for reasons beyond just simply meeting those energy transition goals. It's also for economic reasons. In the center of this chart, you can basically see the total exports in 2022 of products that were exported from China to the European Union and that would in future be subject to the carbon border adjustment and the additional tariffs that come along with that. It's also beyond that that we see that policy and also being driven by investment and financing. Looking at the financing that banks such as the Asian Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are providing to a number of areas, including importantly the build-out of gas infrastructure. If you look at that period of 2016 to 2023 that we show here, one-third of investment that the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank supported was into gas infrastructure and really building out that gas infrastructure for the expected demand growth. On the right-hand side, you see another really important factor that's linked to the emissions reduction and perhaps in the near term even a bigger driver in China, which is improving air quality. This is something that was driven for a number of years in the Beijing area with increased investments making in terms of doubling the size of the gas grid and therefore reducing the amount of the demand for coal and increasing the demand for gas. Importantly, if you look at the dots there, you can see the number of days that were considered unhealthy in a given year. You can see that in 2014, at the start of that journey, more than 180 years sorry, more than 180 days a year, so about half the year were unhealthy days. That's moved to less than 40 in 2022. Huge improvement in air quality in Beijing that's come along with this coal-to-gas switching as well. Next, I want to look a little bit about buildings and particularly the role that gas plays in meeting heating energy demand. The example that we've used here is the U.K.. About 85% of the homes in the U.K. rely on gas to provide for cooking, for heating, and for their hot water. Probably one of the things we want you to take away from the chart on the left here is that, first of all, the total energy demand that buildings have in terms of through gas is actually double the total electricity demand in the U.K.. And not only can you see from the chart that it's double in terms of its total scale, but it's also a lot more variable in terms of from month to month and how that demand plays out over time. So of course, heat pumps are seen as one of the key ways, one of the preferred ways perhaps to decarbonize heating in buildings. But if you look at the number of installations that are required in terms of heat pumps year by year and how much that needs to increase, if you look then also in terms of what's needed to basically in terms of the grids and ensuring that the grids are sufficiently stable to handle that increased demands. And then in addition, if we want that power to be renewable, the amount of capacity that needs to be built out not only to meet the average but to meet the peaks in electricity demand that will come along with that electrification, that's a really tall order. This is a journey that I think these countries are on. But I think it's important to recognize that while that is happening, that gas continues to play an extremely important role in providing heating for these kind of markets. And on the right-hand side, you can see that this is not just playing out in the U.K.. We've just given a couple of other examples of markets there in terms of China, the EU, and the USA, and we have the same things happening there and how they comparatively are in terms of size to the U.K.. So gas will continue to play, in our view, a critical role in meeting heating demand for buildings. And then lastly, maybe looking a little bit at emerging Asia. So as I said earlier, globally, we really see the growth in gas demand and in LNG coming from the non-power sector. But there's a few key markets where actually power would be playing a key role as well. Here I particularly want to cast your eye to the Southeast Asia on the right-hand side of this chart, where actually the main decarbonization thrust in these markets is going to be the switch from coal to renewables. But we do see that gas will continue to play an important role, a complementary role to those renewables in terms of providing stability and flexibility in the grid. What you see is that the prediction actually is that the share of gas in the electricity and power sectors there is going to remain relatively stable. But of course, that's happening in a growing overall market and a growing demand. And importantly, something that Steve will touch on later again is that in these countries, we see domestic gas production reducing. So as that share stays the same, LNG is stepping in to fill that gap. This is very much what we've seen happening in Europe as well. Maybe here a transition to Europe. One of the questions perhaps is, does gas still have a role to play, particularly in markets where we already have a high renewable penetration? Two examples that we have here. On the left-hand side, we have Spain. On the right-hand side, we have the Netherlands. Spain is a market where about 50% of electricity generation capacity is being the currently installed capacity is wind and solar. In the Netherlands, it's actually the second highest solar per capita installed, so relatively mature both in terms of renewables penetration. What you see in both on the left-hand side, we have basically a chart with the hourly rates. On the right-hand side in the Netherlands, the daily rates. In both of them, you see that as wind and solar generation goes down, that gas steps in to fill that gap and provides both the flexibility and the stability that the grid needs, so continues to really play a complementary role also supporting the uptake and the consistency of renewables in these markets. One other market that we wanted to touch on briefly is the marine sector and the important role that LNG is also playing in helping to decarbonize the marine sector. We now have about 1,000 vessels, both in terms of operation as well as on order, that are LNG-fueled. As you see from the pie chart there, if we look at the order book for 2025, about 25% of new vessels were LNG-fueled. So what we also see is that about 79% of those vessels are basically built with low-methane slip technology, so two-stroke engines. So this is quite an important market that we see growing in the next years. And as you can see from the middle chart, we expect that this market could grow to 10 million tons per annum by the end of the decade. Working together with energy efficiency technologies in terms of how the vessels operate, we believe that this can have a really important role in reducing the emissions in the marine sector. And it's also important to consider that as these new vessels go in order, it's not necessarily a lock-in forever in terms of LNG. But it also provides the platform for continuing down that journey of decarbonization with being able to switch out to bio-LNG or synthetic fuels in future. Now, all of this, of course, it is extremely important that we continue to focus on decarbonizing the production of gas and LNG both today and in the future. And on this slide, you see a number of ways that the market is pursuing that. And I think we need to pursue all of these in parallel in order to find in future the right solutions to have a more decarbonized energy system. Let me just touch on a few. First of all, maybe carbon-compensated LNG. Of course, the type of credits that have been used have been under scrutiny a lot in terms of carbon compensation. And therefore, I think it's really important that we've had a new industry collaboration in terms of measurement, reporting, and verification, so MRV being led under the GIIGNL. Basically, an important development to make sure that there's consistency between buyers and sellers about the type of credits and the quality of those credits that are being used for carbon-compensated LNG. I think, as I mentioned earlier, you have bio-LNG and synthetic gases that can be used as drop-in, not only like I just mentioned in the marine sector but also in other utilizations. Of course, that will have the huge advantage of then not needing to change out and make the large investment in change in infrastructure downstream at the customers as well. Then lastly, we also see that carbon capture and storage will be playing an important role in helping to decarbonize the gas value chain. As an example, if CCS is added to an existing liquefaction plant, there is the opportunity to basically take up to 80% of the emissions of that liquefaction plant and offset those by storing them underground. So I think also a great opportunity and things that, as I mentioned earlier, all these things we need to pursue in order to have the right outcomes in the future. And lastly, I just also wanted to something that's an important passion for me, wanted to say a little bit about methane emissions and the absolute critical role, particularly in the near term in this decade in terms of focusing on reducing methane emissions and getting to that near-zero. And I think this is an area where that's important across the gas value chain and has really been getting a lot of momentum. I think starting with COP26, where the Global Methane Pledge was made, and over 150 countries now signed up to that Global Methane Pledge, covering also more than 80% of the LNG-importing countries. That's been followed up more recently at COP28 with the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter and also the World Bank Methane and Flaring Fund, which is intended to help those countries and companies that are maybe perhaps earlier on the methane reduction journey help them with the experience and knowledge but also the funding to get onto that journey. The other one I wanted to touch on is in the middle of this slide. And this is all about, again, MRV, about measurement, reporting, and verification, and OGMP 2.0, which I consider absolutely the gold standard in that space. And seeing that now over 120 companies, which cover more than 80% of the LNG flows, have signed up to that. So really, I think very positive developments in terms of ensuring that we focused on decarbonizing the gas value chain and the LNG chain moving forward. So that's it for Section One. I'll hand over to Steve now to take us into what happened in 2023. Steve, over to you. Thanks, Cederic. And good afternoon, everybody. Good morning, America. It's the eighth time now that we've had the pleasure to tell the story of what's happening in the LNG market. And despite doing it so often, there's always plenty to talk about. In fact, I think this is the longest presentation we've ever subjected you to. So I'll get on and start telling the rest of the story. But it's great to start the 2023 review with this slide, which shows the loading of the 1,000th cargo from Shell's QC LNG project in Australia, a great achievement for the team down there. So this slide focuses on the two key offsetting factors that have allowed the global gas market, the global LNG market, to balance in 2023. Historically, when we do these presentations, we tell a very simple story. Energy demand grows. Gas grows faster than energy overall. And LNG grows faster than gas overall. We've just been through a period of tremendous turmoil in international gas markets, firstly with COVID and then secondly with the Ukraine-Russia situation and the implications on Russian pipeline gas into Europe. And the first chart shows a comparison of the world today versus 2019 before those challenges hit the market. What you can see is the LNG market has grown, not substantially, but it's grown just over 10% in that period. But the pipeline gas market, the international pipeline market, has shrunk by a larger extent. So over the last few years, the global gas market has shrunk overall. And that creates a structural tightness in the market. At the same time, the short-term changes that affect short-term demand in 2023 have predominantly been quite negative for gas demand. We've just been through the third mild winter in a row. We've seen strong nuclear power generation in the key nuclear countries in France, Japan, and Korea. And the Chinese economic recovery has been relatively modest. And some of the gas-consuming industries have suffered particularly, whether that's export-led industries or industries that supply the construction sector like glass or ceramics or cement. So we've seen weak demand in China and mild temperatures. So what we've seen is a long-term tight market offset by short-term weak factors. And the two have allowed the market to balance. And the chart on the right shows the price reductions we've seen over the last couple of years because of that. The price in 2023 was much lower than 2022 or the end of 2021. But on a historic basis, it's still been higher than typical price levels for spot LNG. And what we've actually seen is at the end of the 2022-2023 year, when it became clear that we would get through that winter okay, we saw a reduction in prices. And we've seen a similar thing recently as it's become clear that we're going to get through this winter as an industry okay. But while things are relatively balanced and seem relatively comfortable today, the market is still quite fragile. The first chart here shows that on a historic basis, we've seen very, very high gas inventories in Europe throughout the last year. And that's been a combination of tight supply and demand destruction related to the higher prices we've seen. But we pointed out three events that happened during the second half of the year at a time when European inventories were very, very high and the market should feel quite comfortable: the three events related to Norwegian maintenance, the prospect of strikes in Australian LNG production, and then obviously the start of the Israeli-Hamas conflict. Three events that didn't actually cause any material disruption to the global gas markets. But they created quite an impact in actually the trading patterns and the spot prices we saw. So those three events all led to price increases on the day of between 10%-15% and record trading volumes for TTF in Europe. So we have a structurally tight market that's been balanced by near-term market weakness but where we see fragility and volatility continuing. So looking at the actual LNG supply situation last year, probably the biggest news was the U.S. became the world's largest LNG producer after only starting to export in 2016. So very rapid growth there. As Europe had high inventories, we saw an increased volume of U.S. volumes to Asia over the year. But then different trade patterns. First of all, we saw a lot of volumes going through the Panama Canal. But low water levels there forced a diversion of shipping through the Suez Canal. Then at the end of the year, the Israel-Hamas conflict and the situation in the Red Sea caused a movement away from the Red Sea and another route. So strong trade from the U.S. to Asia but different trading patterns to get there. So if we look at the demand side of the equation, the importing countries, we saw, again, a strong recovery from Asia in 2023 after reducing demand in 2022 when cargoes were pulled away to Europe to replace lost Russian pipeline gas. So mainland China saw the largest increase, the fastest growth in LNG markets in 2023. But we also saw very strong growth from Thailand and new markets emerging, important new markets like the Philippines and Vietnam. Within Europe, we saw a shifting pattern. Countries with new import facilities, particularly Germany, Netherlands, and also Italy, saw a big increase in imports. That was offset by a reduction into places like the United Kingdom and France as new import terminals allowed the European gas market and LNG market to connect more efficiently. So we'll look at Europe in a bit more detail. The first chart here shows the challenges that we've seen in the European gas demand over the last year driven by the high prices, the supply constraints, and the demand destruction. What you see is European gas demand falling by about 10%. But all forms of gas demand fell: power, buildings, industry, and all forms of supply, whether it's domestic production, LNG, pipelines from Russia or North Africa or Central Asia. Everything declined. Then looking at the second and third charts, more specifically on power and on industry, in power, the gas demand was relatively low, driven, again, by pricing but also increased growth in renewables. And in industry, weak starts the year. But towards the end of the year, as prices started to moderate, we saw a recovery of gas demand in industry in Europe. When we look at China, we see the absolute opposite story. Gas demand in China grew by 8%. But all forms of gas demand grew, whether that was transport, industry, buildings, and power, and all forms of supply, domestic production, pipeline imports, and LNG, increased. And that caused the LNG demand in China to increase back to about 72 million tons in 2023, which pretty much matched China's long-term contract positions. So China wasn't a big player in the spot market last year. But what you see is, despite that strong growth we saw in 2023, imports in China were still 10% below the level they were two years ago. As you'll see later on in the story, we're forecasting strong growth in Chinese LNG demand going forward. In Japan, we see a different story. Japan is a country that is seeing a long-term decline in its gas demand and therefore its LNG demand. As Cederic mentioned, gas demand in Japan peaked in the last decade. And therefore, we're seeing lower LNG imports. But LNG still plays a very important role in providing flexibility in Japan's gas demand, whether there's an unprecedented increase or reduction in demand driven by heat waves. In this example, LNG provides the flexibility to allow global gas markets and specific LNG markets to balance. So looking forward into 2024, what do we expect to happen in the coming year? The industry is expected to grow. The forecast range from between 7-20 million tons growth over the coming year, not a massive amount of growth compared to what we expect to see in the subsequent years. The largest amount of that growth is expected to go into Asia and particularly China. This forecasts growth in China from about 4-7 million tons over 2024. We saw in January alone an increase of 2 million tons imports into China compared to January 2023 and potentially a reduction in LNG into Europe compared to last year. What's probably most interesting on this chart is the right-hand chart, which shows the massive growth we're seeing in import capacity for LNG in 2024. We expect over 100 million tons of new import capacity to come online compared to that 7-20 million tons of growth in supply, creating a lot more flexibility. This growth in import capacity comes from many different markets but particularly Europe, in Germany, in Greece, in Italy, and also in China, where we expect to see 10 new LNG terminals start up this year. So looking a little bit further ahead, we are coming towards the end of a period of relatively limited growth in supply. Between 2020 and 2023, we only saw 40 million tons of new supply. This year, it might be slightly higher. But clearly, in 2025, 2026, 2027, there is a lot more new supply to come on from the large volumes of LNG that's under construction in the United States and Qatar. There's quite a bit of uncertainty over the timing of the new supply driven by specific project challenges and delays driven by the geopolitical situation. We have a project in Russia that's suffering from sanctions. We have the project in Mozambique where the construction has been halted because of the security situation. But it's clear that a lot of new LNG will come to the market over the rest of the decade. But that's not a new thing. The LNG industry has had a strong track record of absorbing significant increases in supply in short periods of time. And this will be the third step up in supply we'll have seen this century. Between 2009 and 2011, we saw a massive growth when Qatar first started building its LNG megatrains. Most of that volume was absorbed by Japan post the Fukushima incident. Between 2017 and 2019, we saw a big wave of supply from Australia and the United States. Most of that volume was absorbed by the rapid growth in Chinese energy demand at the time. And then again, between 2025 and 2027 or a bit later, we'll see a third big step up in supply, in absolute quantity, the biggest that we'll have seen this century. But in terms of percentage of the market, it's actually smaller than what we've seen in the other two examples I described. But I think the good news is there is a lot of latent demand for LNG. There's a lot of demand that has been constrained over the last few years because of this tight market situation I've described, because LNG has been pulled into Europe to replace Russian pipeline gas. A lot of new markets that want to import LNG have been delayed, many of which have already developed the import infrastructure: Vietnam, Ghana, the Philippines, Bahrain, and others that are keen to import LNG and need LNGs like Australia, Sri Lanka, South Africa. We also see strong demand growth in the shipping sector, the LNG bunkering business that Cederic described. Just as a Shell data point, in 2022, despite unfavorable LNG prices compared to alternative fuels, we did more bunkerings than we'd done in all the previous years put together. We are a significant player in that market with about a 30% market share. As we go into 2024, we now have a situation where LNG is actually very competitive compared to the oil alternatives. That has impacts not just in the LNG bunkering market but other markets. India, we're already seeing an increase in demand because of the lower prices. There's various markets which have the fuel switching optionality in Europe and in developing economies to buy more LNG at the expense of liquid fuels. So stepping back and looking at the overall supply-demand balance between now and 2040, we show this first chart every year. The red area is the amount of LNG that's in production today. That declines over time as gas fields get depleted and projects come to the end of their natural life. We have a very significant amount of LNG under construction at the moment, particularly in Qatar and the United States. But the amount of LNG that's expected to be produced for the rest of this decade is within the range of central demand forecasts from the key industry commentators. And then in the next decade, the industry clearly needs a lot more LNG supply to meet the continued growth in demand that's forecast. The center chart shows a comparison between these forecasts and some of the net-zero scenarios. The net-zero scenarios have lower demand projections. But I think it's important to recognize that they still show LNG demand growing for at least the rest of this decade. After that, they may increase at a slower rate, plateau, or start to decline. But under all these scenarios, LNG continues to play a material part of the global energy market for quite some time to come. And we look specifically on where this demand growth is coming from. And it's very much China for the rest of this decade and then South and Southeast Asia for the reasons Cederic described earlier then into the 2030s. So Europe is very important to the LNG market in a way that it wasn't traditionally. It was always considered to be a flexible market that could absorb LNG if it wasn't needed elsewhere. Now, because of the Russian gas situation, Europe needs LNG. Europe has actually started to sign long-term LNG contracts over the last couple of years. The long-term contracts that it's signed don't fill the hole. The hole exists because even though gas demand is declining in Europe, the domestic production and pipeline imports are declining at a similar or even faster rate. Therefore, the gap between demand and domestic or pipeline supply is pretty constant for the rest of the decade. The long-term contracts that Europe has signed will start to fill that hole. We still see a structural short of 50-70 million tons a year for the rest of the decade of more LNG that Europe needs to secure on a long-term or on a spot basis. The other thing to note is that a lot of these contracts Europe has purchased are contracts where the LNG might not necessarily end up in Europe. They're either FOB purchases where the cargoes could go anywhere or delivered purchases where the seller has diversion rights to send the cargoes to other markets. China is the market that we are most bullish about this decade. One of the reasons for that is the massive amount of new gas infrastructure that is coming on stream at the moment. We hear a lot about the amount of coal-fired power generation being built in China or the amount of renewable generation being built in China. Both are true. There's also a massive amount of gas-fired generation being built in China. What the first chart here shows is the amount of new gas-fired generation that will come online in the next two years in China is more than all the gas-fired generation that exists in the U.K. today. In terms of regas capacity, it's even more extreme. The amount of new regas capacity that will come on stream in China this year is basically the same as all the amounts of regas capacity that has been built in India ever on a cumulative basis. Then we see a similar thing in gas storage as well, where China is building as much storage in a year almost as Japan has in total. This drives a very strong outlook for our forecast for gas demand in China. As Cederic mentioned before, this gas demand is in many ways driven by industry and buildings and not so much the power sector. This strong growth in gas demand will pull lots of new supply. It will encourage domestic production. It will enable more pipeline imports. But LNG will actually disproportionately provide a bigger share of that. Then obviously, there's a lot of questions that are raised by the size of China's market and its growth and its role in international markets. People talk about how vulnerable is China to the U.S. supply or how vulnerable is the U.S. to Chinese demand. When you actually look at the amount of U.S. LNG that's been contracted into China, it's less than 5% of the Chinese gas market. The LNG and supply from Russia to China is higher. But it's still less than 15% of Chinese gas demand. So China has good diversification from different supply sources as well as different ways of delivering gas. Now, four other countries in Asia that we think are particularly important are the Southeast Asian countries in Bangladesh, Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam. Whereas China and India, we see strong demand growth predominantly driven by power and buildings. These are markets that are really driven by power. First of all, you have a very rapidly growing power sector in these markets. And secondly, these are markets which have a very established gas infrastructure. These are markets that were typically supplied with domestic gas. And as the domestic gas goes into decline, we see very strong expected growth in LNG imports to offset the lost domestic production and to supply that growth in power generation. Four very significant growth markets but that do require further investment in regas capacity to meet their potential. Now moving on to the U.S. or North America more generally as a supply source. North America has very quickly become the world's leading LNG supplier with production of close to 100 million tons today. It has roughly the same amount of export capacity under construction. It will grow to about 200 million tons of exports by the end of the decade, which will make it the supplier of about 30% of global LNG demand, about 5% of global gas demand. Where LNG will become about 20% of North American gas demand, it will become equivalent to the power sector or buildings or industry in North America as a gas consumer. This then introduces North American risk to the global LNG industry. Most of the gas that sits in North America is in very specific locations. The LNG industry is very concentrated on the Gulf Coast in East Texas and Louisiana. Therefore, you have to find a way to connect these gas resources to those export projects. That introduces a new set of risks to the global LNG industry. This presentation isn't really about Shell's business. One thing I really do like about our position today in North America is the diversification. We are a big buyer from the U.S. Gulf Coast. We're also the offtaker from the Elba Island projects on the East Coast. We will be the largest offtaker from the LNG Canada project in Canada's West Coast and also an offtaker from the Mexico Pacific project on Mexico's West Coast. So we have a good diversification of our North American supply position geographically and on price indexations. So I've talked quite a bit about the different markets, the different supply sources in the industry. I want to talk now a bit about the commercial structure of the industry because we often get asked, "Well, won't LNG commoditize? Won't all LNG be sold on the spot market?" And actually, that's not a trend that we're seeing. The first chart here shows that we have quite a stable situation where about 70% of LNG is sold under long-term contracts and 30% of LNG is sold under spot contracts. And both of those commercial structures serve a purpose. Long-term contracts provide security of supply. They provide pricing predictability. And it's also the commercial structure that enables the financing and the development of new supply projects that allow the industry to grow. Whereas the spot market clearly provides flexibility and for people to match their supply and demand in the short term. We continue to see a growing industry where new supplies come into the market underpinned by long-term contracts. The two dominant sources of growth in the industry are Qatar and North America, which have very, very different commercial structures. Therefore, the LNG market continues to have these three independent commercial structures: long-term contracts indexed to the U.S. gas market, long-term contracts indexed to the oil price, and a spot commoditized market. It's not normal for a commodity to have three different pricing structures that coexist. It's what works for the LNG industry. It works well for Shell. In terms of why will that continue, it's because buyers value long-term contracts and continue to sign long-term contracts. The first chart here shows that over the last three years, buyers have signed 200 million tons of LNG under long-term contracts, which is an unprecedented level of commitment to that form of commercial structure. And therefore, this really gives us confidence that the long-term contracts are here to stay. We're not in a market that is rapidly commoditizing. And as you see, those long-term contracts are being signed by buyers in different regions in China, in Europe, portfolio players like ourselves and elsewhere for different terms. And as a consequence of that, we have a significant volume of long-term contracts that will be in effect after 2040 and now even after 2050. So that's the presentation. If you missed any of it, we summarize it all on this slide. But I'll stop now and welcome any questions. As I've said, the presentation is on the LNG industry. So our expectation is that the questions are on the industry. And we'll talk about Shell specifically in other times and places. But welcome your questions now. Thank you. Our first caller is Biraj Borkhataria from RBC Capital Markets. I don't know if you can hear the question. We can't in the room. Should we go to the next question and try Biraj again later? Oh, jeez. Our next caller is Irene Himona from Societe Generale. Thank you. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? We can. We're relieved that we can. So that's good. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes. So I had a question on slide 27, which is the sort of demand-supply balance. And you show demand begins to exceed supply by about 2032. Five years ago in your 2019 outlook, that point was 2025. So clearly, supply has grown materially faster than demand. But my question really concerns this potential ban on new U.S. LNG export projects. Do you think such a ban would be relevant to the time frame you show on that slide 27? Or is it beyond that period? In other words, does it impact the I think it's yellow under construction capacity. Thank you. Yeah. So the ban does not impact the yellow. So the LNG projects that are under construction will continue to be under construction. Then you have some projects that are approved but not under construction. And you have some projects that are not yet approved and not under construction. And it's the latter of those two that are affected by the ban. So I think the impact of the ban will be very much driven by the duration of the ban. We have about 100 million tons of export projects in the U.S. that are under construction at the moment sorry, in North America that are under construction at the moment. And we have other projects that are approved and can be sanctioned. So the ban doesn't cause the LNG market to be short in this near-term period. But ultimately, there would be an expectation that the U.S. or North America would continue to grow as an LNG exporter. And therefore, at some point in time, the ban would have an impact as buyers are forced to look elsewhere. And there's not as many options where else to look as people would like. So I think in summary, it's a bad thing in principle. In practice, it's probably okay if it's a year or so. But if it was a long-term ban, then it would have quite an impact on the market. Our next caller is Giacomo Romeo from Jefferies. Yes. Thank you. I think you show quite accelerated demand growth from 2026 if I read your charts correctly. And just wondering, you talked about the fact that there is a lot of latent demand. And I'm just wondering, how quickly do you think this can actually come back as prices get to stay at a lower level? And just asking that because some of that is policy-related. And just wondering sort of what kind of assumptions is behind this forecast of demand growth accelerating after 2025. Yeah. Thanks for the question, Giacomo. I think the profile of demand growth that we're showing is very much driven by supply availability. Demand would be much higher today if the supply was available at a reasonable price. What we've been through is a period where supply is constrained because Europe has been pulling LNG away from markets where those volumes may have traditionally gone. As this new supply comes on stream from 2025, 2026, 2027, the countries that we show here will have the ability to then go and buy LNG. How quickly will that happen? It will be driven by, first of all, the supply availability and also the pricing levels. I've mentioned China and India, two key markets that are well-established markets but also price-sensitive markets. We've seen very, very strong growth recently because of the more affordable levels that we're seeing in the market today. Some of the new markets we're showing here are markets that need to develop their own new import infrastructure to import. There's a bit of a time lag there. But in many of these cases, the import infrastructure has been developed. And it's ready to go. And it's just waiting for available, affordable volumes. Our next caller is Alastair Syme from Citi. Thanks. Steve, kind of related question to that last one. I mean, a lot of people talk about sort of a term, the deindustrialization of Europe. And I guess if I look at your chart on European demand, particularly industrial demand, I mean. Recovered a bit the back end of last year. But considering prices fell so much, it hasn't recovered much. So how do you think about what I guess the question is, what price do you think your customers can afford? You need to find a point at which your customers can buy your product. Yeah. Absolutely. And I can't quote numbers. It will be different prices for different customers. Europe has been through quite a structural change as we've seen. They lost the equivalent of about 100 million tons of LNG of Russian pipeline gas. It had to pull every lever it could to rebalance. About half of it got rebalanced by more LNG. The other half was everything else: fuel switching, growth in renewables, growth in pipeline gas. But demand destruction was quite a significant part of how Europe rebalanced. That's why we've seen this 10% demand reduction this year on top of the previous year. What you actually see in the chart this year, though, that if you look at the reduction in demand in 2023, very little of it was in the industrial sector. Much more of it was in the power sector, in the building sector. That was driven by a combination of price but also weather, also by increased renewable growth. So the industry demand has bottomed out. We are starting to see the demand recover. I think the other thing that's important is confidence in prices remaining at an affordable level because what a lot of buyers are quite reluctant to do is to switch back to gas if they think in a month's time or two months' time, then gas is going to be expensive again. So fortunately, Europe, you have different pricing mechanisms and hedging mechanisms that allow people to lock in that pricing that they're seeing at the moment. But this will be driven by the affordability of gas and the confidence in the remaining affordability of gas. Steve, can I follow up? Obviously, you meet a lot of policymakers. Do you sense an urgency in Europe or a concern on this issue about affordability? Is it high on the agenda as you think it should be? I'm afraid I'm going to have to give you the energy trilemma answer, Alastair. I think two years ago, three years ago, all you'd hear about was decarbonization. And now, I think you do get much more balanced conversations between security of supply, affordability, and decarbonization. It's clear that a lot of politicians and policymakers would like to go back to being able to focus solely on decarbonization. But I think there's a recognition that that's not going to happen overnight, that there's a transition that needs to happen before that's a realistic option again. Yeah. Yeah. Go on. No, I think that's clear. Yeah. No, I think that's clear. Yeah. Thank you, Alastair. Our next caller is Biraj Borkhataria from RBC Capital Markets. Hi there. Can you hear me this time? Yep. We hear you, Biraj? Hey. Perfect. Perfect. Sorry about that. My questions are; the first one’s on slide 25, the LNG supply adds for 2024. I was just comparing it versus some of the buildups we have. And it looked relatively low. So I was wondering if you could just briefly run through some of the assumptions behind there. Obviously, you have LNG Canada, Arctic, Golden Pass, and so on. But it did look like a smaller number than I expected. And then the second question is just you had a very helpful slide on the various events on slide 17 that happened, which impacted the front month price. So this is for Steve. But if I take the Australian industrial action that led to a lot of volatility on the spot price but actually no physical impact, is that a tradable event for Shell and the team? Thank you. Okay. Well, let me take your first question first. I think that's probably the more straightforward one. These numbers are the amount of supply growth in the year as opposed to the amount of new capacity coming in the year. So if a train starts up halfway through a year, then you'd have half of the capacity you'd see in one year and half the following year. So that's maybe why there's some difference in the numbers. This isn't the capacity coming on stream. This is the growth in the market. I think some of the projects that you would be looking at in 2025 would include LNG Canada, Golden Pass, Plaquemines, Train 1. In 2026, the new Qatari projects, Plaquemines 2, 2027, Rio Grande, Port Arthur. But there is a lot of uncertainty in this situation, how much Arctic LNG 2 volumes will actually come to the market, when will Mozambique recommence and come to the market, probably beyond this window now. But as I say, this is the consensus of several of the industry-leading commentators' forecasts and the companies that are listed below. So this isn't necessarily our view. It's the industry consensus of what's expected to happen. In terms of the Australian situation, clearly, that caused a lot of volatility in LNG markets. Sorry, volatility in LNG markets is something that we like in our trading business. I'm really not going to talk any more specifically about how those two join together, so. But we are advantaged in the scope of our global gas business that we are active in many supply projects. We are active in many markets. We do a lot of trade. So we get to understand the LNG market really well. But we also get to understand a lot of the markets that drive the supply into or demand adds to the markets really well because we have material gas trading businesses or power trading businesses in those markets as well. Our next caller is Peter Low from Redburn Atlantic. Hi. Thanks. Can you perhaps talk a bit about how you see utilization of the existing LNG supply base? Where do you think declines are likely to come through and over what time frame? Thanks. So Peter, are you thinking about market-wise given that that's the scope of this presentation? Yeah. Exactly. So just globally, obviously, we're looking at going to need capacity additions. But clearly, there'll be some declines from existing projects and such like, not very specifically to Shell, but yeah, from a global supply perspective. Let's see. Just go. So Peter, I think that's probably best shown by this chart and the one on the left here because the red there, that's basically where we see the utilization of existing supply in operation and how we see that playing out over time. And that includes new gas supply projects that would be already kind of, well, foreseen to continue to backfill. But even despite that, we would see that generally in that stock of LNG plants in operation that we see the utilization declining over that time period. So that's what you see in terms of the decline of the red. To be clear, that's including the net of new gas supply projects coming on into those plants. Our next caller is Anish Kapadia from Palissy. G ood afternoon. Couple of questions from me. First of all, I was wondering, how do you see the prospects for blue ammonia? And is there the potential for it to cannibalize some of the LNG growth in the coming years in areas such as marine and power generation? And the second one's to do with LNG pricing in the future. There's clearly a long-term arbitrage if you think about U.S. and global gas prices. The U.S. has shown the ability to produce almost endless gas at a $3-$4 per MMBTU price. So with that continual growth that you're seeing in U.S. export capacity and Canadian export capacity, do you see Henry Hub becoming increasingly important and eventually the main and only driver of LNG pricing? Thanks. Yep. Shall we take the ammonia one first? Yeah. So Anish, I think in terms of let's talk about maybe clean ammonia in general, whether blue or green, and then other low-carbon gases as well, hydrogen, etc. I think there's different applications for that that we see in the market today. Of course, one of the applications that we see is actually replacing the existing ammonia market with cleaner ammonia. And we do see that that will continue. In some places, we also see customers that are looking to co-fire it into coal-fired power plants and that it will have a role to play there. I do think we need to be cognizant of the challenges that it would be is if you want to either export ammonia like we are doing with LNG today or if you want to take hydrogen, for example, and liquefy it and then ship it around the world. Well, those are still quite large challenges that will take time to develop, time in terms of the technology but also time in terms of the cost. And for example, with ammonia, if you want to then use it as hydrogen in an end market, there's also the challenges of the back-cracking and what that takes and what that costs. So like I said, I think initially, in particular, we will see it playing in some markets. But we don't see it cannibalizing in the time period that we've shown here into the gas demand that we've projected here. Yeah. On the LNG pricing question, Anish, you're right. The U.S. exports are clearly very much in the money today. We have a situation today where U.S. exports are at a record level. We're still coming out of the winter. Yet, Henry Hub prices are actually lower than the numbers you quoted there, below $2. There's clearly a significant margin in exporting U.S. LNG available. That's an industry that we've benefited from in the past and where we are well positioned for the future from the diversification perspective, particularly that I mentioned and the scale of our offtake position. I don't think you can take it for granted that LNG from the U.S. will always be the cheapest or will always be profitable. If you kind of look at long-term price forecasts, take the Henry Hub price levels you mentioned, and convert that to a delivered Asian price, it's pretty similar to an oil price indexation based on typical oil price assumptions. So it could go either way. I think the one risk that we worry about in the U.S. is the concentration of export capacity on the Gulf Coast. As it gets harder to build pipeline capacity within the U.S., it may get harder and harder to get the gas to the export projects. And therefore, we might see bigger price spreads across the U.S. and North America than we've seen in the past. And again, that's why I like our diversified position across North America. Our next caller is Bertrand Hodee from Kepler Cheuvreux. Yes. Hello, Steve and Cederic. Many thanks for sharing all those useful information and data points. Can you share with us your thinking about India? Because there are projections all over the place in terms of growth in LNG imports up to 2030. There are numbers as high as 150 million tons. Regas capacity is probably something that we'll need to build. But I think it's not just about regas capacity. It's about building the infrastructure inside India to make the rise of gas consumption possible. And so anything you can share on the India outlook, you've shared with us a lot of data on China, on Southeast Asia. But can you make a focus on India and how key you see this market in the coming 10 years? Yeah. Thanks, Berto. I agree. We have a lot of slides on China and Southeast Asia. But the message is meant to include India or South Asia more generally. We see three big drivers of global LNG demand. One is China. One is Southeast Asia. But the other is South Asia. And again, it's similar factors to China. It's more infrastructure. It's the massive coal-to-gas switching opportunity. It's the need to fix air quality. India is a market that we like. We have our import terminal in Hazira. We are growing our downstream business selling gas through pipelines and through trucking, through our LNG truck loading facility in India. So yeah, we think it's one of the three engines of growth of the industry. Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe, Bertrand, just to add to that, in your comparison to China, we do see that India remains a very price-sensitive market. So as Steve said, we actually see that there is latent demand in India. But it'll require a certain price point for that to come on. And it is a reality, as you said, that the way that the infrastructure in India is and how coordinated that is is certainly different than in a place like China. But we do see across the country, the industry locally as well as the government moving in that direction in terms of building out the gas infrastructure across the country and putting more emphasis on that for the years ahead. Our next caller is Giacomo Romeo from Jefferies. Thank you. I didn't manage to ask a follow-up on the demand side. On slide 24 for China, you show Chinese pipeline imports not growing much after 2025. Just trying to understand here, it looks like you have Power of Siberia reaching a capacity level at 25. But just checking there if you don't why you don't think the Central Asian Corridor will have capacity to grow further, particularly given that we have a new line being built there. Thanks, Giacomo. Welcome back. Where's the which are we looking at? The pipeline imports? I'm not sure I'm seeing what you're seeing. I think we have continued growth in pipeline imports here in the middle chart through to 2040. So I think our message remains the same. Gas demand in China is very strong because it's growing at a fast rate from a very small base. And therefore, China will continue to need more domestic production, more pipeline imports, and more LNG imports. Obviously, there's quite a long timeline for new supply to be unlocked by pipeline from Russia. But that's why we highlight Chinese dependence on Russia in the right-hand charts. It is just to have a look at how comfortable China will be with that exposure. And it seems to be perfectly manageable at the moment. But no, we expect to see continued growth in all forms of gas supply into China. Our final caller is Menno Hulshof from TD Securities. Good afternoon, Steve and Cederic. I appreciate your taking my question. I have one on contracting and slide 33 specifically where you map out global LNG trade on the basis of term versus spot going back to 2015. If I'm just looking at the trend lines, it looks like term contract market share is slowly falling at the expense of spot. And so my question is, if you were to extrapolate out to 2030, what do you expect those trend lines to look like, especially as we get hit with that surge of new supply starting in 2025? Yeah. I don't think we're seeing any dramatic changes. The fact that so many new term contracts have been signed over the last three years, probably the reverse. What tends to happen is the spot market grows over time. But because the overall market grows in quite a bumpy way, when you get new ramp-ups of a lot of new supply like we expect to see over the coming years, then you get a lot of term contracts coming into the market over a short period. And then as things get reoptimized, then the spot volumes will tend to grow again. So not necessarily this year or next year. But as we go into the second half of this decade, we'll probably see actually an increase in term again because of the new contracts that we can see that have been signed that haven't started deliveries yet. Yeah. And just to add, it's probably obvious from the chart. But I think the second message to really take from that chart, although you see that trend from 2015, that really from 2021, the relative movement has been flat between the market share of term versus spot. Yeah. And again, it's somewhat subjective because there's certain cargoes that may get sold under both term contracts and spot cargoes. I think what's important is it's incredibly unusual for a commodity to have these different commercial structures to coexist and to coexist on a sustained basis. And therefore, the assumption is that this market structure being so unusual won't last. What we're actually seeing is that while it's unusual, it works. It's sustainable because people are continuing to sign long-term Henry Hub contracts, sign long-term oil contracts, and buy on the spot market. Okay. Well, if that was the last question, we'd like to thank you all for your time and attention and questions. We wish you all the very best for the rest of the day. We look forward to speaking to you again some other time. Thank you very much. Yep. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for taking an interest in LNG.