Our operations and products generate large amounts of revenues for governments. In 2008, Shell collected over $94 billion in excise duties and sales taxes on behalf of governments on the fuel and other products we transported or sold. We paid another $26 billion in corporate taxes and $2.3 billion in royalties on the oil and gas we extracted.
While governments are responsible for using these funds to produce social benefits, we try to help them. We support governments’ efforts to tackle corruption, for example through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) whose board we sit on. The EITI asks mining and oil companies to publish their payments to host governments and encourages these governments to make such disclosures mandatory, and to be open and accountable themselves for how these funds are spent.
