Eight days before the opening of the COP27 international climate conference, where energy companies are ordered to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and while the French political class is debating a tax on superprofits, TotalEnergies has announced that it has garnered in nine months more profits than last year: 17.3 billion dollars against 16 billion in all in 2021. In the third quarter, its profit increased by 43% compared to the same quarter of 2021.
“So much the better”, rejoiced the Minister of the Economy Bruno le Maire at the microphone of BFM Business. “We should all be proud to have a large French energy company like Total”, said the minister, stressing that his earnings made it possible to “pay a discount on fuel” to French motorists, and “to increase salaries of Total”.
The group has indeed announced a 13th month for all its employees worldwide, and has just signed an agreement to increase wages in France with two majority unions after a long strike in its refineries which continues to create fuel shortages in French service stations.
TotalEnergies has also confirmed that a European tax on superprofits being developed in Brussels, called “solidarity contribution on the profits of energy groups”, would cost it one billion euros in 2022.
It will be divided between the six EU countries where the group has refining or exploration-production activities: France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark.
But the key to sharing the oil and gas windfall between shareholders, employees and taxpayers remained disputed until Thursday in two French sites of the group still on strike, at the call of the CGT: the Normandy refinery in Gonfreville-L’Orcher (Seine Maritime) and the Feyzin depot (Rhône).
– “Golden age of gas” –
Before winter, with the massive increase in imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) urgently decided by European countries weaned from Russian gas, the group explained on Thursday that it had benefited from its LNG strategy as well than the sharp rise in gas prices.
Also, on the very day when the Director General of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol, warned – also in Paris – that the planet “is approaching the end of the golden age of gas”, TotalEnergies welcomed its choice made a few years ago to integrate the entire liquefied gas value chain: from production to distribution to the customer, including liquefaction at -163 degrees, its transport by LNG tanker and marketing .
“We are the leading exporters of LNG in the United States”, thus reminded the financial director Jean-Pierre Sbraire in front of analysts.
In the third quarter, even though the group’s LNG production fell by 6% year-on-year and total LNG sales fell by 10% compared to the second quarter due to maintenance or production stoppages in various plants , total liquefied gas sales increased by 5% over one year.
The average price of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has soared 50% in the last three months, compared to the second quarter.
For the coming months, the group continues to count on windfalls from LNG as well as support for oil prices from OPEC’s decision to lower its production quotas. Gas prices “should remain high, driven by the need to import LNG into Europe to replace Russian gas imports,” the group said.
The Russian war in Ukraine nevertheless weighs on the group’s finances: TotalEnergies has provisioned 3.1 billion dollars related to risks on Russia, after provisions of 7.6 billion during the first two quarters. But it maintains its presence at its Siberian LNG site, Yamal.
