Total is no exception. In a wide-ranging interview, Total SE CEO Patrick Pouyanné said he wants the group to be recognized not “as an oil and gas company, but as an energy company.”
Total was one of several major oil companies, BP Plc among them, that earlier this month paid what one analyst described as “staggering” prices for the leases to U.K. offshore wind projects. “I will not buy, but I think I would not be surprised to see one of my European peers spending money,” he said. “A banker came to me and said ‘If you don’t buy it, BP will buy it’. I said, OK, but at this price, why should I buy that? Explain it to me.”
But the 57-year-old decried as a “paradox” the view that “we will solve the climate change challenge just because there is no more equity invested in oil and gas majors, that’s something completely wrong.” Although the pandemic left Total with a loss of US$7.2 billion last year as oil prices slumped, the group has ploughed ahead with its net-zero plan.