Shell says it will stop buying Russian oil and natural gas over Ukraine war

Energy giant Shell said Tuesday that it will stop buying Russian oil and natural gas and shut down its service stations, aviation fuels and other operations in the country amid international pressure for companies to sever ties over the invasion of Ukraine.

The company said in a statement that it would withdraw from all Russian hydrocarbons, including crude oil, petroleum products, natural gas and liquefied natural gas, "in a phased manner."

The decision comes as surging oil prices have been rattling global markets and just days after Ukraine's foreign minister criticized Shell for continuing to buy Russian oil, lashing out at the company for continuing to do business with President Vladimir Putin's government.

"We are acutely aware that our decision last week to purchase a cargo of Russian crude oil to be refined into products like petrol and diesel — despite being made with security of supplies at the forefront of our thinking — was not the right one and we are sorry," CEO Ben van Beurden said. "As we have already said, we will commit profits from the limited, remaining amounts of Russian oil we will process to a dedicated fund."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he had been told Shell "discretely" bought the oil Friday and appealed to the public to pressure the company and other international firms to halt such purchases.

"One question to Shell: doesn't Russian oil smell (like) Ukrainian blood for you?" Kuleba said on Twitter. "I call on all conscious people around the globe to demand multinational companies to cut all business ties with Russia."

Last week, Shell said it was "shocked by the loss of life in Ukraine" and would end its joint ventures with Gazprom, the massive oil and gas company controlled by the Russian government.

Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukraine's president, this past weekend penned an op-ed pleading with the world to cut off what he denounced as Russia's "blood oil," which supplies nearly $1 billion a day to Moscow and which he said is financing the war in Ukraine. "Buy nothing from Russia," he wrote.

ExxonMobil said last week that it is closing its operations in Russia, joining fellow energy giants BP and Equinor back from Russia which world's third-largest oil producer. Specifically, Exxon plans to exit the Sakhalin-1 project, an oil and gas operation on Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East that the company operates on behalf of an international consortium. The company is also dropping new investments in Russia, the company said.

Shell's decision to stop purchasing Russian energy comes as the White House and Congress considers banning U.S. imports of Russian oil. The U.S. is far less dependent on Russian oil than Europe. Last year, about 8% of U.S. oil imports came from Russia, while as of January almost no Russian oil came into the U.S, said Troy Vincent, senior market analyst at DTN, a commodities research firm.

A Quinnipiac poll released Monday found an overwhelming majority of Americans in favor of banning Russian oil, even if it means higher gas prices.