The gradual suspension of TotalEnergies’ activities in Russia does not jeopardize the group’s future, the group’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, said on Wednesday.
PARIS (Reuters) – The gradual suspension of TotalEnergies’ activities in Russia does not jeopardize the group’s future, the group’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, said on Wednesday.
“Russia was 5% of our cash flow, it’s not zero, it was 10% of our result, it’s important reserves but it turns out that they don’t bring in a lot of money”, explained Patrick Pouyanné on RTL.
“The company is not at stake at all (…) it is clear that the consequence (…) since Mr. Putin decided to invade Ukraine, is that he does not There is no future growth in Russia for TotalEnergie”, he added.
The French oil group announced on Tuesday that it would end its purchases of oil and petroleum products from Russia by the end of the year and that it was beginning the gradual suspension of its activities in the country.
For Patrick Pouyanné, the announcement at the beginning of the month that TotalEnergies would not make new investments in Russia was “underestimated”.
With this announcement, “I put that day with my board of directors a cross on all the future that we were building in Russia”, he explained, underlining that the group does not would not put “new capital into the Arctic 2 project”.
The oil group had been the target for several weeks of regular criticism from certain NGOs as well as the EELV presidential candidate Yannick Jadot in particular, who accused it of continuing its activities in Russia despite the offensive launched by Moscow in Ukraine. on February 24. [nL5N2VH2VJ]
The Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, for his part judged at the beginning of March that there was “a problem of principle in working with any political or economic figure close to Russian power”.
(Written by Myriam Rivet and Nicolas Delame)
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