Shell Technology Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of Royal Dutch Shell, will make investments worth several hundred million dollars in emerging technology companies over the next six to eight years, with the goal of finding innovations useful to the company’s operations.
It will invest in promising technology companies, technology spin-outs and externally-managed venture capital funds involved in smarter exploration processes and enhanced extraction techniques.
Target technology areas include gas production and conversion, geophysical imaging, chemical manufacturing and conversion, novel materials, enhanced oil recovery, and water treatment. Other possible areas include information technology, drilling and completion, subsurface sensing, production in challenging environments, operational efficiency and future energy technologies.
Gerald Schotman, Shell’s chief technology officer, said: “We want to enable the brightest and the best to develop their ideas and benefit from Shell’s expertise and global reach so that we can get these technologies up and running in our projects as fast as we can.”
Shell said it spent more than $1.3bn on research and development last year.