TotalEnergies Shareholders Meeting Disrupted by Climate Activists in Paris

2023-05-26 08:59:41

TOTALENERGIES – After BP and Shell, it’s the turn of TotalEnergies. Climate activists, who came to disrupt the general assembly of TotalEnergies, but also the government, put pressure on the oil group this Friday, May 26, to turn away from fossil fuels more quickly.

The company opened its annual general meeting of shareholders at 10 a.m. in a Parisian concert hall protected since the day before by security guards, barriers and police. At dawn, dozens of demonstrators tried to enter the stretch of street passing in front of the Salle Pleyel, in the beautiful districts of Paris.

A dozen of them, seated in front of the entrance, were dislodged by the security forces who ended up throwing tear gas in the middle of the group, as you can see in the video at the top of the article.

The demonstrators nevertheless remained nearby, around a hundred on each side of the section of street, blocked by police and gendarmerie trucks. Four people were arrested, police said.

LCI journalist Paul Larrouturou also said on Twitter that his colleague Harmony Pondy Nyaga had been “thrown to the ground with her camera by a security guard then a gendarme while she[était] clearly marked as a journalist”, as you can see here in these pictures.

“The GA must stand”we repeated this Friday morning on the side of TotalEnergies, while the first shareholders arrived and returned to the premises in dribs and drabs, greeted by the cries of the protesters.

Mobile phones prohibited during the GA

One of them, Jean-Paul (who does not want to give his name) explained to AFP that he had a “ecological sensitivity” : “We are all affected by climatic phenomena, but there are also economic and employment aspects. It is more complicated than that “. “Assassins! Criminals! » threw some demonstrators to the shareholders trying to enter the room.

“We won’t let them go”assured Marie Cohuet, spokesperson for the Alternatiba association, for whom the company “embodies the worst of what is done in terms of exploitation of people and the planet”. The blockage is organized with other associations including Friends of the Earth, ANV-COP21, Attac, Greenpeace, Scientists in Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion.

“We regret it, we had to take exceptional measures both in the call for the police and strict control of access to this assembly”declared the CEO of TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné opening the session. “A number of organizations have announced that they want to disrupt the assembly and we have therefore taken measures to ensure that it can take place in the best possible conditions”.

At the same time, the Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher called on the group to “package” on renewable energies. “Total invests in renewable energies, but the challenge is to go faster, stronger and above all faster”declared on franceinfo the minister, for whom the oil and gas companies “must reinvent themselves, get out of fossil fuels”.

The meeting at TotalEnergies comes at the end of a stormy AGM season, during which actions have multiplied against the big groups against a backdrop of staggering profits: together, BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and TotalEnergies show more than $40 billion in profits this quarter, after a great 2022.

Inside, TotalEnergies banned shareholders and journalists from using their cell phones, forcing them to leave certain personal effects at the entrance.

CEO salary

Unheard of, two-meter-high Plexiglas plates have been erected between the stage where the leaders and the public will take place.

The 1.5 million individual shareholders, present or online, will be called upon to vote twice on the climate: once on the group’s climate strategy, which should be adopted, and another, consultative, from the organization of activist shareholders Follow This, which calls on TotalEnergies to align its emissions reduction targets with the 2015 Paris Agreement, to limit global warming to +1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era .

These 17 investors, who hold nearly 1.5% of TotalEnergies, include La Banque PostaleAM, Edmond de Rotschild AM and La Financière de l’Échiquier.

Even if the group does not plan to significantly reduce its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions over the decade, it intends to devote a third of its investments to low-carbon energies and reach 100 GW of renewable electricity capacity in 2030.

Its CEO Patrick Pouyanné, in an interview at The cross Wednesdayrejects the criticisms, and explains that it must in particular respond to the growing demand of developing countries. “No, TotalEnergies cannot reduce oil demand on its own”he hammers, calling for focus on “the end of coal”.

TotalEnergies is present in many liquefied natural gas and oil projects, in the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Papua or Uganda, with the controversial Eacop heated pipeline project becoming a media symbol of the anti-oil fight .

This controversy is in addition to many others for the major, criticized for its record profit of 20.5 billion dollars (19.12 billion euros) in 2022, its taxes in France or the salary of the CEO. A 10% increase in his remuneration for 2023 is also on the agenda of the GA.

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