We are hearing Mr. Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies. I wanted him to testify before our commission even before we decided to create a flash mission on fuel taxation and the fiscal yield of price increases. Through this hearing we will combine both aspects. It is somewhat paradoxical that this hearing, originally not scheduled for this date, is taking place, I hope after the war, but also during a heatwave. Given the tax issues facing large French multinationals, hearing the CEO of TotalEnergies seemed both instructive and useful. We are interested in all taxes applying to TotalEnergies, especially recent fiscal measures. In the context of the oil crisis, this hearing has special significance. Thank you for your presence. Without further delay, I give you the floor for introductory remarks.
Thank you. I will give factual elements about TotalEnergies. I am accompanied by my tax director Nathalie Monietti. On results: in 2025, the company posted an adjusted net profit of $15.6 billion, with oil averaging $69 per barrel. We paid $19 billion in taxes and production levies, an effective tax rate of over 40%. In 2022, with oil at $101, the rate was over 50% and we paid $35 billion. The tax rate increases with the oil price because producer countries capture more of the rent. 70% of our results come from production, 10% from electricity, 20% from downstream. In Q1 2026, profit was $5.4 billion with oil at $81, not extraordinary. Our break-even has been lowered from $80 to $25 per barrel over 10 years. The crisis cost us 15% of production, offset by portfolio diversification. In France, our refining and petrochemical activities are structurally loss-making, with over €5 billion in tax losses accumulated. Despite that, we invest over €500 million per year in refineries. On taxation: since 2019, we publish a tax transparency report. Our total contribution to French public finances is about €2 billion per year. We pay low corporate income tax in France because of territoriality and non-double taxation; our profits are mainly taxed in producer countries at high rates (e.g., 78% in Norway, over 90% in UAE). If we optimized, we would prefer France's 25.8% rate. The debate on taxing foreign profits would lead to double taxation. The global consolidated profit regime was abolished in 2011; reinstating it would not increase French tax. The OECD GloBE 2 minimum tax has not increased our French tax. We have only seven subsidiaries in tax havens out of 1,500, for legal reasons, with no tax advantage. On transfer pricing: everything is at market prices, audited by 50 inspectors from Bercy. If I wanted to optimize, I would bring profits to France. It's common sense.
Thank you. Here is how we will proceed. I will ask questions first, then the rapporteur general, then Philippe Brun from the flash mission, then group spokespersons. I choose the format of back-and-forth questions and answers. My questions concern both taxation and the flash mission on fuel prices.
You have capped prices at €1.99 for gasoline and €2.25 for diesel, which you seem to consider a sufficient contribution. My first question: in Q1 2026, worldwide profits were nearly €5 billion, up 51% from Q1 2025. Can you provide the French results for Q1 2026, distinguishing refining and distribution, compared to the same period in 2025? Your representative in the Economic Affairs Committee said the refining margin in March was exceptionally good.
I don't have the exact French fiscal result. What I can say is that the refining margin was high and currently stands at about $13 per barrel. The French result for Q1 is estimated at around €500 million. Most of that likely came in March, as January-February margins were low. The margin tripled due to the crisis; normally when oil prices rise, refining margins fall, but here both rose. The Hormuz crisis affected crude oil (but China and the US absorbed 60% of the shock) and, more importantly, refined products. Many Middle Eastern refineries producing diesel and kerosene were damaged, so product margins remain elevated. For example, our refinery in Saudi Arabia operates at 70% capacity due to drone attacks. This is unprecedented. Hence, €500 million for Q1, which is why I said in an interview that we would pay corporate income tax in 2026 if the year continues.
Thank you. So you don't have March figures. Your representative in the Economic Affairs Committee apparently had them. You also gave another explanation on April 29, saying it's your ability to capture the price increase. Would you repeat that?
I just explained it. Our break-even is at $25 per barrel. We built a resilient company. When prices are higher, profits are higher, but taxes are also higher, and the producer countries benefit. That is the mechanism, and I fully stand by it.
Can you tell us how much the price cap cost you and what your net profits are after this loss of revenue?
You mean profit on the loss of revenue? Unfortunately, there is no profit; it's a loss.
Okay. I repeat: can you tell us how much the price cap cost you? You said it cost something.
The cap is ongoing. An approximate figure today is about €200 million, calculated relative to average competitor prices or our pre-crisis prices.
Okay, about €200 million. Our group proposed an alternative: a price freeze using refining margins, as in 1990. Have you compared what such a freeze at €1.70 per liter (the pre-war price) would have cost you?
Yet you said it could have prompted your departure from France.
I don't think I ever said those words. I said that if the government decided a taxation mechanism, we would comply and would not add a price cap on top.
Now that prices are starting to fall, couldn't we consider administrative price and margin controls to accelerate the drop toward €1.70?
I am not in favor of administrative controls. It is not the best solution for purchasing power. We are the only oil company in the world to have implemented a voluntary price cap. I receive criticism from my peers for that. We did it to protect the French, and only in France because we are attached to our country. So criticizing this measure is hard for me to understand.
I was looking at the evolution between the falling wholesale prices since the beginning of the week and the way pump prices are applied. And I see that we are replicating day after day: the supply price has gone from 1.94 to 1.85 for diesel since early June. At the pump, the price went from 2.09 to 1.94, so we are replicating the decline. The government has a tool to track this precisely; ministers regularly summon distribution executives. So we will replicate the decline. But compared to the start of the crisis, the supply cost was 1.65; today it's 1.85, a 20-cent difference. We can't immediately go to 1.70; we will as the crisis recedes. That's why we maintain our commitment, because the prices I'm talking about are averages. There are 1,200 rural stations in France with higher logistics costs, and today 2,000 stations still benefit from the 1.99 cap on gasoline. The cap protects French purchasing power. And for diesel, next weekend for the holiday, we said we would apply 2.09; 1,000 stations will benefit. The good news is that only 1,000 means 2,300 stations will display a lower price. So we're not setting a single price but a cap. We won't raise prices while they are falling. And it's often rural stations that most benefit from these caps because they have the highest supply costs.
Yeah. Regarding the criticism you've received about the cap, some came from other distributors who explained that the margin in distribution is very low, 2 to 3 cents, but more than that, you actually used this price cut to gain market share in distribution. Do you have any evidence on that?
Gaining market share translates into larger volumes. Yes, I have evidence. For TotalEnergies, the cap can be attributed to who in the company? The more fuel you sell, the more... Actually, since the cap is below cost, it's my integrated chain that finances it. Volumes have increased by about 15% in our stations because the French came; some weekends they increased by 30%, causing long queues. Meanwhile, the overall French market contracted by 10 to 15% because of high prices, so the French were sensitive to our purchasing power protection. It's good news for our company, which isn't known for being cheap, but this repositioning satisfies me as CEO.
So volumes +15%. One last question on this price issue. In late February and early March, it took two weeks for the price of 100-octane and diesel to rise 20 to 40 cents per liter and settle around €2. Given the Middle East situation, all actors seem to expect a clear easing. Can we therefore expect pump prices to fall as quickly as they rose?
That depends on international prices. Again, crude is at $80, but refining margins haven't fallen yet. So for now, I'm at 95, we were at 115. The answer to your question is that it depends on international prices, and we will be transparent and replicate decreases as we did increases. I receive a complex table every day to ensure my teams replicate correctly. I track it myself every evening. We've made a commitment and I have curves to show, but I can't show them now; we will answer the written questions from the flash mission on fuel.
Okay, very well. Still on the question of markets and the risk of speculation, the Financial Times calculated that TotalEnergies made an exceptional profit of one billion dollars in one month just by buying March oil cargoes for delivery in May. On April 28, Total stated to the National Assembly that it didn't know where the press got that figure, but it didn't provide other numbers. So my simple question is: What profit did Total make on this operation, which can be characterized as trading and had little to do with supply problems or the war, but rather speculation?
No, first I answered that question in an interview in Le Figaro. I explained what happened. Our trading activities observed in February that the US Navy was massing at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz. They deduced something might happen and took a buy position on oil, which other companies didn't do. They took a significant risk; they hadn't seen that the Strait could close in 2-3 days, and if you buy futures without physical delivery, you can lose money. Since we are oil producers and have access to the terminal in Fujairah, we could take delivery. This operation was not speculation but market observation and oil purchase; they could have been wrong or faced non-delivery. They made money. There were other operations that offset this, because traders have risk limits and take positions in both directions. This is a normal trading activity that many oil companies practice. We were transparent: in our first quarter results, we said oil trading results were excellent; they are about €2 billion per year, about 10% of the company's results. This quarter, instead of €500 million, they made about €500 million more. That won't repeat every quarter.
A small global question on this. You said you had very large margins worldwide, €5 billion, +51% in the first quarter. €500 million in France if I understood correctly. Obviously, this will continue for a few months. We are in a situation where the cost of the war weighs on everyone, on French purchasing power, on the national community, and we will face credit cancellations to compensate. Do you understand that when an entity, in this case Total in France, makes super-profits during this period, some people, including me, find it normal that you contribute in some way to compensate for the costs of the war?
But again, we didn't declare the war. I don't think France did either. The French didn't either. But taxation of TotalEnergies operates within an international framework. I trust that France is a rule-of-law state. Wait, excuse me, I'm not talking about taxation now. I'm asking about contributions. We made a voluntary contribution. Nothing forced us to cap pump prices. We did it because I learned from 2022-2023 and thought it was responsible. People can say it's insufficient, but the French appreciated it. So we decided to continue it as long as the war lasts. I think it's better for responsibility to be shared. It was not for TotalEnergies to decide which social groups are most fragile; we took a measure for all French that complements the government's decisions. My answer is: we will do what the national representations decide within the law. TotalEnergies will pay much more taxes in 2026 than in 2025, but mainly to producer countries where we make most of our profits. In France, if results hold through the year, we will pay corporate tax including the surtax provided for by French law.
OK. I at least agree on one thing: it's not up to you to decide; it would be up to the state to decide a price freeze or a binding mechanism. One last question. I'll start with a disagreement. This isn't the first time you've answered about taxation in France by mixing social contributions and taxes. Social contributions are deferred wages, not the same as taxes. In terms of taxation, it's obvious that for years, relative to your revenue, you pay zero or ridiculously low corporate tax. But my question is: Mrs. Patrier beside you said 'We have no results in tax havens' and you gave a list of some tax havens. The problem is that the official list of tax havens doesn't include countries with very favorable tax regimes in Europe, like Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands. I want to know if you have subsidiaries in those countries, and why Switzerland is completely absent from the 54 pages of your tax transparency report, because the nominal tax rate is known but the implicit rate is considerably reduced in Switzerland.
The tax rate in Switzerland is 15%. We went beyond European obligations by publishing a report covering all countries subject to EU obligations, and we added some ourselves. I don't consider Switzerland a tax haven. We have no problem being transparent on Switzerland. Switzerland is aligned with the global minimum tax of 15%. In our report, you'll find 60-10 countries, including Luxembourg and Ireland where we have almost nothing. These countries represent 90% of the taxes we pay and 75% of profits. We are transparent on 90% of taxes. The remaining 25% of profits come from other countries with an average tax rate of 18%. The two key contributors are Switzerland and Singapore. We will consider publishing those two countries in future years. But again, we are ahead of regulatory requirements; most CAC 40 colleagues are not happy we published this report as they consider it commercial secrecy. We preempted the issue.
Thank you, Mr. Pouyanné. Now the questions from the General Rapporteur.
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chairman and CEO, first I want to note that we are fortunate in France to have a global company that is strategic, profitable, and resilient. If there have been direct effects on the pump, ask yourself: if we didn't have a national company like Total, if we had ExxonMobil in France, do you think there would have been a voluntary price cap? Probably not. So we don't sufficiently rejoice in our ability to influence world affairs to then weaken the few tools we have. Now, I have two or three questions. First, a technical question unrelated to taxation. Mr. President, I wrote to you about this. Suriname and Guyana have extraction activities. You have done some tests in French Guiana that seem inconclusive. Do you consider that definitively there are no petroleum resources on national territory? Could future extraction techniques be so profitable that we might get there? Should we forget about finding oil in a French department or region?
Yes, I... Pardon. The hearing is about taxation and results. We are straying far, so I'd rather not open that. I will answer you in writing, Mr. Rapporteur. But I have already stated before the national representation: we found hydrocarbons in French Guiana on a well called Zaï dating back to 2013-14, but only 50 million barrels, far too low to develop offshore. We drilled five additional wells, all negative. We drilled more than we would in any other country. The Guyana/Suriname basin is geologically disconnected from the French Guiana basin; there is a structural high. The last well drilled in France in 2019 found nothing. So if you ask me today, as a scientist, I can't say there are no hydrocarbons, but the quantities are non-commercial. Will TotalEnergie return to drill in French Guiana? No. I will not put €400 million more into a negative result. I leave it to the national representation to decide on prohibition laws. I'm against prohibition laws; they give the impression of hiding things. But TotalEnergie's position is clear: we did a lot of work and will not drill again even if authorized.
Asked that we complain the same way we are not asked to criticize ourselves today. So yes, we have a system, we are a company that, once again, as I told you, is the bulk of the profits. That's where it is in the analysis, I read, it's not refining, trading and marketing. Certainly, it's these downstream activities, but the bulk of TotalEnergies' result in the first quarter of 2026 came from our production activities. They are the ones contributing. So certainly, the others had a better result in Q1 2026 than in Q1 2025. And I explained why. But that's not where the bulk of TotalEnergies' resources come from. So we made a voluntary decision to distribute part of these exceptional results to French customers.
Well, I'll take you to my constituency, you'll see that we are well over 15 minutes from a Total station. I... the president asked you about the single price operation and its cost to Total. This operation, you told us just now that you think it cost about 200 million euros. So is that a monthly figure? Is it a figure for the entire period? And when we compare these 200 million euros with your operating result, including the figure you just gave us, that is, the cost of exploration in Guyana, a pure loss of 400 million euros, how do you assess the importance of this effort in the group's overall finances?
Sorry, excuse me. It's a figure to date, you know. It's an estimate to date, an order of magnitude to date. So since the beginning, well, I consider that compared to what we spent at the time, I think in 2023 we had to spend 400 to 500 million euros. That's entirely over a period that lasted longer. We are in line with what we have spent. So I don't compare this effort to other efforts. I look at it in light of this market where, once again, we sought to protect French consumers.
Thank you. The Flash mission heard from producers, sorry, independent distributors who saw their market share decrease and their turnover halved, notably due to the competition created by your offer. We also note that this offer allowed you, for example, to value your customer portfolio, for example on electricity sales, electricity customers benefiting from a price guarantee. What was the gain for your group from this marketing operation, particularly in terms of customer acquisition in the electricity sales sector?
Relatively limited, 50,000 customers today, so it's not extraordinary. For now, the French have difficulty making the connection between TotalEnergies as a fuel supplier and TotalEnergies as an electricity supplier, even though we have more than 4 million customers in France, but we are still developing on that front. We also, independently, wanted to make the connection because TotalEnergies is not only an oil and gas company but also an electricity company, trying to tell our customers that we can contribute to all your energies. We also launched an electricity offer that, I think, for 3 years, the French can have a guarantee of an electricity price 10% lower than the average public price in France. So that's it. So it's the desire to do both, but it's not yet completely proven. On the other hand, we already have nearly 800,000 electricity subscribers who already benefit from the price guarantee. So we have a flow of 50,000 new ones, we have 800,000 electricity subscribers who have understood that by collecting a card, they can guarantee the price all year at less than 1.99 on gasoline and diesel. So we can think that we also retain these 800,000 customers through the joint offer.
This is deliberate on our part. A question, Mr. Chairman and CEO, about the stockout rate at your stations. According to the calculations we made with the Flash mission, 80% of stations in France that ran out of diesel were TotalEnergies stations, while you represent 20% of all stations in France. Your competitors notably accuse you of having poorly supplied your stations. Of having essentially done a marketing cost to prevent Parliament from taking the necessary measures, particularly regarding the excess profits made by your group in the first quarter.
Our competitors need to decide: either I take market share, or I deliberately don't supply my stations. They could choose. We obviously had the support of the state, because I remind you that in France, normally you cannot restock on weekends, tanker trucks cannot operate. We had special authorization from the public authorities to do so to restock. Indeed, there was such a demand at our stations that some ran out. I myself once faced the possibility of getting gasoline at a station. It happened to me, but I can tell you that the TotalEnergies teams, on the contrary, worked tirelessly all over France, and I want to congratulate them in front of you for working tirelessly to cope with this influx of consumers in conditions that were not always simple because there were long queues that spilled onto national roads. On highways, it was even sometimes a bit dangerous. So no, we did everything we could to restock, and therefore competitors cannot accuse us both of taking market share and of pretending to do marketing. No, we really did everything we could to supply our stations over the weekends when we were running these special promotions.
So the profits... the profits of the TotalEnergies group increased by 51% in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025, and net profit of the public entity rose to nearly 5 billion euros during this quarter, and the dividend paid to shareholders was increased by 6%. What are your forecasts for the second quarter?
It is likely that the second quarter will be higher than the first, since the crisis continued in April, May, June. So whereas in the first quarter it was March. But once again, I don't have all the results for the quarter yet as of today, but I expect results to be higher than the first quarter. Or else something is not going well and we are not capturing the price increase, which is perhaps not impossible. We'll see what happened in the various businesses. That's what I can tell you about the dividend. No, it is set once a year. The board of directors set it, I remind you that we operate in energy as per French law, we set an annual dividend but we pay it quarterly. The quarterly installment is set once a year for all quarters. It is 91 euro cents and it is set for future quarters as the year progresses. So it will not increase, I can say that.
TotalEnergies distributes fuel in many countries, particularly in countries that have adopted reduced fuel taxes during the crisis. What is your view or opinion on the measures implemented in Spain, Poland, Austria, Italy, all these countries that have adopted reduced fuel taxes at the pump?
Yeah. It turns out we don't distribute gasoline in those countries. The only country in Europe where we directly distribute fuel is Belgium, because we sold all our networks in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, because we listen to what the European Parliament votes. It votes for a profound transformation of road transport towards electric vehicles in 2035. And so, as we anticipate a decline in oil markets in Europe, which would be logical, we decided not to keep these activities. Instead, we are doing electric charging activities in those countries. So I have no comment to make on the policies of the countries in question since we are not present there. Actually, on the substance, I am pleased that the French state this time showed parsimony in managing this crisis and contributed, because you cannot simultaneously complain about the public defense deficit and ask the state to permanently substitute for various crises. I think they sought to manage through targeted public measures, and that seems like an adequate policy in France. Once again, it's not for me to comment.
Last question. How do you plan to position yourself in the coming months to ease the burden on our fellow citizens who are suffering from this rise in fuel prices, and not give the impression that this crisis, which strongly affects the purchasing power of the French, benefits your group.
Well, we will position ourselves the same way we do today by maintaining the caps. So once again, I have the feeling that oil markets will ease. So at that point, what we have been doing for 5 days, we will replicate the decline faithfully for the French, the replication of oil markets. The other question we have not addressed at the executive committee level is that since we have repositioned the brand as a brand that defends purchasing power, in a normal situation, do we continue this positioning more aggressively or do we return to our old practices? That's a debate we will have at the company level, but we haven't had it yet. My point of view is that we have an interest in capitalizing on what we are doing in terms of attachment to strengthen the link between the French and our company.
National Rally. So I don't know who is speaking.
