Shell Gasoline Cuts Gas Guidance to 920,000 Barrels
Shell gasoline cut its gas production guidance to 880,000 to 920,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day after Middle East attacks hit its Qatar operations. That leaves the company heading into first-quarter 2026 results with lower expected output even as trading in its chemicals and products business was set to be "significantly higher" than the previous quarter.
Qatar output slipped in March
Shell’s PearlGTL site in Qatar stopped production in March after being hit during the attacks, and LNG facilities in Qatar partly owned by Shell were also affected. The revised range is below the 920,000 to 980,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day Shell had previously forecast.
948,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day was Shell’s gas output in the final quarter of last year, so the new guidance points to a lower base for the latest quarter. For investors focused on volume rather than price, that is the clearest operational drag in the update.
Brent at 126 dollars a barrel
126 dollars a barrel was Brent crude’s peak on Thursday before it fell back to about 110 dollars a barrel on Friday. Shell’s results arrive while global energy supplies remain disrupted, and the company’s earnings forecasts have risen nearly 50% since the start of the US and Israel’s war with Iran.
14% is the size of the expected year-on-year jump in first-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings, to $6.36 billion from $5.58 billion a year earlier. That suggests higher trading and oil prices may offset part of the gas hit, but not erase the production loss from Qatar.
Shell’s trading boost
Earlier this month, Shell told investors that trading from its chemical and products business was expected to be "significantly higher" than in the previous quarter. The company’s update on Thursday will show whether that trading strength was enough to cushion the lower gas volumes already flagged to investors.
The read-through for shareholders is narrow but important: a stronger trading result can lift earnings, yet the gas guidance cut to 880,000 to 920,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day still leaves Shell with less output than it expected before the attacks. If those higher trading gains show up in the quarter, they may soften the impact, but they do not reverse the production loss in Qatar.
