A Total Access station near Paris. – E. PIERMONT / AFP
Total boss Patrick Pouyanné announced Thursday at the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum his intention to help “decarbonize Russian energy”, preparing projects in the Arctic with Russian Novatek around hydrogen and gas. ‘ammonia.
During a round table bringing together Russian and French businessmen, the main champion of Franco-Russian economic cooperation reiterated Total’s commitment – recently renamed TotalEnergies – to “provide more carbon-free energy” and ” decarbonize Russian energy ”. “There’s no point in crying over the fossil, we have plenty of resources. Soon you will no longer recognize Total, ”he said.
“Decarbonize production as much as possible”
Regarding Yamal, a gigantic liquefied natural gas project carried out in the Arctic with the partner Novatek, Patrick Pouyanné said he wanted to “decarbonize production as much as possible, capture CO2 from trains, build wind farms”. But also “to do something other than LNG. At Yamal we are starting to discuss hydrogen and ammonia with Novatek ”.
“The future of LNG and low-carbon LNG” goes through this, he subsequently told journalists, indicating that decisions in this direction would be taken “in the next few years, not in ten years, from as possible “. “There are a lot of French bosses who are here in Saint Petersburg, we are one of the main foreign employers in Russia,” Patrick Pouyanné, one of the main international bosses there, told AFP.
“As Emmanuel Macron wants more foreign investment in France, Vladimir Poutin wants more in Russia and you have to listen to him, that means that we are welcomed, and I can attest to having invested several billion in the country that French investors are well received, ”he added.