TotalEnergies is the Energy Champion Europe Needs But No Longer Wants
France's energy giant is not just an oil and gas extractor but a vertically integrated refiner, transporter, and electricity provider. Despite multiple energy crises, it lacks elite political support.
TotalEnergies, until recently known as Total, is one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. The French corporation has a market capitalization of around $200 billion (TTE) as of May 2026, and generated $182 billion of revenue in 2025, making it the largest company in France by revenue.1 Since current CEO Patrick Pouyanné started his tenure in 2014, Total’s market capitalization has more than tripled, outperforming all of its “Big Oil” competitors, including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP.2 Total has a little over 100,000 employees in over one hundred countries.3 In 2025, the company produced around 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day across both its oil and gas production operations, which means that Total operates at a scale comparable to some of the world’s largest oil and gas producing countries: Norway, for instance, produced around 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2025.4 Because of the disappearance of Russian pipeline gas from the European market due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and accompanying sanctions on Russia, Total has become a much more strategically important company for Europe.