The Scenario Approach to Possible Futures for Oil and Natural Gas

Shell has been using scenario planning for 40 years to help deepen its strategic thinking. Developing and applying scenarios is part of an ongoing process in Shell that encourages decision-makers to explore the features, uncertainties, and boundaries of the future landscape, and engage with alternative points of view. The scenarios go beyond conventional energy outlooks and consider long-term trends in economics, energy supply and demand, geopolitical shifts and social change. They are based on plausible assumptions and quantification, and include the impact of different patterns of individual and collective choices. Shell’s latest scenario publication, the New Lens Scenarios, published in 2013, provides an in-depth analysis of how economic, social and political forces might play out over the twenty-first century, as well as their consequences for the global energy system and environment. Its ‘Mountains’ and ‘Oceans’ scenarios set out two distinct paths the world might take in the decades ahead. They reinforce the urgency and complexity of addressing the world’s resource and environmental stresses, and highlight the need for business and government to find new ways to collaborate, fostering policies that promote the development and use of cleaner energy, and improve energy efficiency.