Produce even more oil and gas. If there is one strategic direction that all major industry players now agree on, both in Europe and the United States, this is it. At the end of September, while presenting its strategy to investors in New York, France’s TotalEnergies confirmed its goal of 3% annual growth in hydrocarbon production by 2030. This trajectory could even be slightly exceeded in the next two years, thanks to the launch of several projects in the United States, Brazil, Iraq, and Uganda for oil, and in Qatar and Malaysia for gas. Not to mention Mozambique, where the company is preparing to restart a mega liquefied natural gas project.
Until 2024, the plan was to increase oil and gas volumes by 2% to 3% more per year by 2028. But the French giant has recently revised its production target upwards. For American ExxonMobil, British Shell, or Italian ENI, the figures differ but the direction is the same. This orientation is embraced even more radically by BP. In 2020, the British company set itself apart from its peers by publishing a net-zero plan that included a 40% reduction in its hydrocarbon production over a decade. It has since performed a 180-degree turn, and its CEO recently stated the intention to now increase investments in fossil fuels in order to produce more.