Shell’s $42bn Tanzanian LNG Bet Faces a May Showdown With Investors and Courts

Shell is heading into a defining fortnight that will test its dual strategy of aggressive expansion and shareholder appeasement. The energy giant is on the cusp of finalising one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas projects while simultaneously facing a shareholder revolt over climate strategy, a fresh Dutch lawsuit, and the expiry of a $3.5bn buyback programme.

The Tanzanian LNG project, valued at $42bn, has entered its final legal phase. On 24 April, the government in Dar es Salaam confirmed that negotiations have reached the concluding regulatory stage. Shell managers will travel to Tanzania next week alongside partners Equinor and ExxonMobil for the last round of talks. The venture targets around 57 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves and aims to establish a major export hub by 2030.

The timing is strategic. Shell has been grappling with force majeure declarations on Qatari LNG supplies since March 2026, triggered by regional turmoil in the Middle East. Tanzania is expected to help plug that gap over the medium term. Meanwhile, Shell’s LNG plant in British Columbia is running at full capacity — it exported roughly 1.09 million tonnes in April — though it has come under regulatory scrutiny. The British Columbia Energy Regulator has ordered stricter reporting and root-cause analysis on flaring emissions.

Shareholder Tensions Boil Over

The annual general meeting on 19 May promises to be a heated affair. The activist group Follow This, backed by a coalition of 23 institutional investors, has filed Resolution 23. It demands a detailed report on how Shell intends to protect shareholder value as global oil and gas demand declines.

Shell’s board is urging investors to vote against the resolution, arguing that the requested information is already available in existing reports and that embedding IEA scenarios into the company’s constitution would constitute poor governance. With 23 institutional backers, the resolution carries significant weight and could trigger a lively debate.

The climate pressure does not stop there. Milieudefensie, the Dutch environmental group, filed a fresh lawsuit against Shell on 22 April. The organisation is seeking to block Shell from developing new oil and gas fields and wants a phased emissions reduction between 2030 and 2050. This follows a 2021 court ruling that ordered Shell to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 — a decision overturned on appeal in 2024. The appeals court did, however, affirm that Shell bears a responsibility for climate protection, a finding the new lawsuit builds upon. Shell has dismissed the case as “unreasonable, unrealistic and fundamentally misguided”. No hearing date has been set.

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Buyback Nears Completion, Q1 Numbers Loom

Shell’s $3.5bn share buyback programme is sprinting to the finish line. On 24 April alone, the company bought back roughly 1.45 million shares across multiple European exchanges. Daily volumes in the preceding week ranged from 1.16 million to 2.74 million shares. Morgan Stanley is executing the purchases independently, and the mandate expires on 1 May.

The stock closed on Friday at €38.12, down 0.34% on the day but up around 33% over the past twelve months and 18.5% since the start of the year. That leaves it roughly 6% below the 52-week high of €40.64. Scotiabank recently raised its price target to $122, while TD Cowen maintained a “Buy” rating but trimmed its target to $110.

All eyes are now on 7 May, when Shell releases its first-quarter results. Analysts expect an updated consensus on 29 April, with particular focus on how the Qatari supply disruptions and commodity price volatility have hit margins in the integrated gas segment. The operational preview points to a mixed picture: integrated gas production is forecast to fall to between 880,000 and 920,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down from 948,000 in the previous quarter. The culprit is the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar, the world’s largest facility of its kind, which suffered damage to one of its two production trains following an attack. Repairs are expected to take roughly a year.

On the brighter side, refining and trading performed better than anticipated. The indicative refining margin rose from $14 to $17 per barrel, and the trading and optimisation business exceeded the previous quarter’s results. Renewable energy and energy solutions earnings are expected to land between $0.2bn and $0.7bn, up from $0.1bn in Q4.

South African Exit Takes Shape

Separately, Shell is advancing plans to sell its network of around 600 filling stations in South Africa. Talks with Abu Dhabi state-owned ADNOC have progressed, with the Emirati group emerging as the frontrunner after negotiations with commodity trader Gunvor fell through. The deal is valued at roughly $1bn, and an agreement could be reached within the current quarter. Shell has been active in South Africa for over a century but announced in late 2024 that it would exit the downstream business there as part of a broader portfolio clean-up.

With the buyback ending on 1 May and full Q1 results due a week later, the market is now waiting for concrete data — above all, to see how deeply the Qatar outage has cut into Shell’s bottom line. The Tanzanian LNG deal, the shareholder vote, and the Dutch lawsuit will all add to the noise, but the numbers on 7 May will speak loudest.