Royal Dutch Shell, the oil leviathan, has spent most of its life grappling with a split personality. In the beginning, Shell was not an oil company at all. Marcus Samuel, a London shopkeeper, started by importing exotic shells from the Far East. Those 1833 beginnings live on today only in the name and logo. By 1907 the business was importing oil rather than shells. Then it merged with the Royal Dutch company that found and pumped the black stuff out of the ground.

The newly merged company, 1907-style, was split between transportation and production. It also had a split nationality, which persisted until 2005. Stock market investors regained confidence as the corporate structure unified. It was a sound step in itself. It also drew a line under the tumult that dogged the leadership of Sir Phil Watts, the former chief. For a time, thanks to accounting and reporting kerfuffles, no one seemed at all sure how much oil Shell could claim to have, how effectively it was being managed and where it was going.

It will be a long time before people stop thinking about Royal Dutch Shell as an Anglo-Dutch combination. The company is still grappling with division in other ways. Up to a point, all companies are obliged to manage contradictions, but Shell’s priorities appear unusually ambiguous.

Three examples spring to mind. First is the uncertainty over Shell’s access to oil. It has long been dangerous to assume that Shell, in common with other oil companies, actually owns oilfields. Nations, by and large, own the assets. Companies find the oil and pump it.

Governmental relationships differ from place to place. Politics allows the State to have its tax take in some parts of the world. In other parts, nation states demand full control. Managing the relationships may not be an insurmountable problem, but it is tricky – Shell shareholders may have to get used to earning lower ultimate returns as nations demand a larger slice of the action.

This is not a new problem. BP was stricken when Iran nationalised its oil industry in 1951. Arab states have made the most of the wealth sloshing beneath their feet, but President Putin’s Russia has been keen to assert itself. Ditto for Venezuela, Nigeria and most other places. Oilies have an unfortunate reputation for being big and bad even in developed Western economies, such as Britain and the US.

Secondly, there is the environment. Oil groups have tried for years to clean up their image and reinvent themselves as “energy” companies – sensible, given widespread fears over climate change and oil’s ever-dwindling supply. Shell has taken strides towards the nirvana of corporate responsibility. Gas, a cleaner hydrocarbon, makes a noticeable contribution, but Thursday’s full-year results show that Shell’s business is still dominated by oil. Renewables barely feature.

In share-price terms, the company is also pulled in different directions, as the graph, top left, suggests. On one hand, the soaring oil price has helped to haul the shares upwards. But as one of the largest constituents of the FTSE 100, it has been held back by the subdued stock market conditions of the past year.

Shell shares could march on impressively if the oil price continues to rise and stock market investors rediscover their faith in equities. The obverse is also true, of course. And the two forces could cancel each other out by moving in different directions. But oil prices should continue to help Shell. It made about $68 a barrel on average last year, but $83 in the fourth quarter. If oil remains in the $90 to $100 range of recent weeks, Shell’s average price for this year will move upwards. History tells us that stock market slumps bark worse than they bite, too. The sensible tactic is to assume that markets will recover.

The shares give a prospective dividend yield of 4.4 per cent and trade at the equivalent of seven times analysts’ estimates of future earnings. That makes them cheap enough to buy in the hope of a short-term gain. They could rise by up to 15 per cent over the next three months, but holders should review the stock regularly. Thursday’s enormous profits – it made £1.5 million an hour last year – also remind investors that Shell is not growing across the board. It produced 7 per cent less oil than in 2006. Oil prices have helped profits, but volumes are critical and are moving against the company.

There was a time when the likes of Shell were the stocks to buy and then forget about. No longer. Investors well now need to adopt a more attentive approach. robert.cole@thetimes.co.uk