Discover the French oil major that is successfully combining growth and environmental sustainability
“TEXAS IS AN El Dorado for us, an energy El Dorado,” declared Patrick Pouyanné, boss of TotalEnergies, last month at CERAWeek, the energy industry’s annual shindig in Houston. He unveiled an expansion of the French supermajor’s shale holdings in the south of the state, a deal intended to bolster its position as the leading exporter of American liquefied natural gas. It had earlier bought three Texan gas-fired power plants and opened a new electricity-trading desk in Houston. Meanwhile in Brazoria, a windswept county an hour’s drive from the city, it has built a solar park capable of producing 380 megawatts (MW) of clean power, and of stashing some of the resulting joules in a bank of lithium-ion batteries made by Saft, its energy-storage arm. Hundreds of sheep and the odd gazelle graze among 700,000 photovoltaic panels on its 2,300 acres (930 hectares), with not a nodding donkey in sight. “You love energy here in all forms, from gas to renewables,” Mr Pouyanné told the oilmen at the Houston gabfest.
This ecumenical strategy is TotalEnergies’ attempt to bridge its industry’s transatlantic divide when it comes to the energy transition. The French firm’s big European rivals, BP and Shell, invested heavily in “electrons” businesses like wind and solar energy—until weak returns and sagging share prices forced them into embarrassing U-turns. Its American counterparts, ExxonMobil and Chevron, have instead doubled down on oil and gas, while backing “clean-molecule” businesses like hydrogen and carbon capture—and have been rewarded with higher valuations.
Mr Pouyanné thinks he can straddle both worlds. His firm will continue to invest in “System A”, as he calls the oil and gas that the world still needs. Examples include its recent hydrocarbon projects in Brazil, Suriname, Namibia and the United Arab Emirates. Here Mr Pouyanné’s imperatives are reducing the amount of carbon…
2024-04-04 07:49:56
Article from www.economist.com