No investor punishment for TotalEnergies loosening the purse strings

The European major’s upping of capex forecasts is not ringing alarm bells despite wider shareholder desire for discipline

“We have a good problem, which is… we have more cash; where do we allocate it?” Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of TotalEnergies, told the Energy Intelligence Forum in October. But the firm’s plans to bump up the higher range for its annual capex from $14-16bn to $14-18bn has not spooked investors leery of another boom-and-bust cycle of IOCs overinvesting during a period of high prices. “We have decided that it is an opportunity to accelerate our strategy of transformation,” Pouyanne continues. “I know that some people say, ‘oh, they lose discipline,’” he concedes. “I am not sure we lose discipline to add $2bn when we have much more cash. I think it is normal, it is logical. “Most of it is dedicated t