Shell confirms intention to divest from South African downstream operations

First it was Caltex/Chevron (now called Astron, with those revolting Orange and Purple forecourts. Who on earth decided on that colour scheme by the way). Now Shell. What it actually is all about is that the parent companies have no faith in South Africa and want to get the hell out as soon as possible. Also all the service stations are owned by franchisees, mostly BEE appointees, who are incredibly difficult to manage and they just can’t be bothered to do it any longer.

I have been boycotting Shell service stations for several decades. They have a nasty reputation in Africa. For human rights abuses as well as environmental atrocities. Go to hell Shell…good riddance!

Bye When Shell got it wrong on fracking Karoo I stopped using Shell completely. In my town I can see the activity levels of a BP and Shell within 50m of the other.

It is the down stream business , which in profit must be small and more hassle than it is worth. The supply to the forecourts owned by whoever will continue, a seamless supply one invoice paid in advance. The problem is that a number of the forecourts will close with long standing franchise owners and staff going to the wall. This is sad, and I agree that it is an indictment on our ability to attract and keep investment with our non attractive fuck the west attitude. There are probably some well connected cadres in the wings rubbing their hands at the opportunity.

In the words of Mr Buffet. "if you going to panic, be the first to panic"

As usual, the tinned food in the basement brigade are out in full force again! Wow! Just a casual search on the Internet (you know, this thing that led you to DM in the first place) will reveal that: (Shell) has steadily and deliberately been selling downstream assets for over a decade. In 2011, it announced its intention to divest most of its shareholding in its African downstream business (excluding South Africa). This included Botswana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Kenya and Namibia. In 2014, it sold its Australian downstream oil assets (including 900 service stations) to Vitol and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council. In 2016, it got rid of its Danish downstream assets (230 retail stations) and last year it disposed of downstream assets in Uruguay, Paraguay and Colombia (a total of over 250 service stations). This is from an article on another site that has a W from world wide you know what and money in it. Can I ask a question of all the tinfoil hat commentators on here: were the assets of Shell in Australia, Denmark and the rest of the countries mentioned also subject to ruinous BEE policies? Did the ANC through its proxies milk the operations in Botswana and Paraguay? Or have you all just jumped the shark and drawn conclusions based on, well, nothing at all other than it's easy to trot out the same boring tropes over and again? I wonder if this comment will make it through the gauntlet of self-imposed censors on here....

For Shell to divest is an eye opener and shocker, but their reasons don't make sense.. Africa, yes we are properly part of the African continent and don't stand out as the leader in much any longer, has a long way to go for any EV initiative to make sense. There are far bigger issues than getting EV numbers up. There is hardly security in power let alone keeping what's there, in place. The basic needs of South African citizens are to meet the daily and monthly needs. Calculating the incredible low cost of driving an EV is not even a sniff in the wind, considering the high investment required to own one. And we love a road trip! Trying to do a Joburg Cape Town trip in a day (some of us still like the challenge) is out of the question. And what about running off to a quiet dorpie to do business for the day, where are the charge stations on all those hundreds of routes. We have a long way to go for EV to be defacto. There are other reasons for Shell leaving, maybe they are leaning more towards 'ethical' methods of business..

I hardly ever bought Shell petrol unless there was no alternative in the smaller towns. All due, a few decades back, to the treatment of staff at one of their forecourts by the owner.

It seems that this is typical of multi-national companies moving into a country that they only do so when the resources are available at a cheap labor cost. Once the resource is depleted then the said company pulls out leaving the employees high and dry (out of work). In other words "rape" the country of its resources and say "bye-bye" after they're finished with "extracting the resource". This is the business model of many multinational businesses. As for Shell, they came into South Africa at a time when the country offered very cheap labor for over a century, now that BRICS and it's new affiliates are beginning to show some sort of force along with load shedding (yes load shedding drives the cost of petrol and other oil products up) Shell executives took a look at least 2 years ago and thought to themselves... maybe it's time that South Africa had a great run but now it's time to leave. Their excuse to possibly change their stations to charging stations may or not turn out to be a good thing. A few auto companies are slamming the brakes on electrified vehicles saying that the batteries that run the autos use a rare metal that is mined by children (I don't know if this is true). Instead, they're switching to Hydrogen saying that the only byproduct is water.

It's true, Shell has played a very significant role in South Africa's Economic Landscape .At the news of downstreaming and divestment, what is it, and what are it's implications,what does this mean?