Prior to the the first World War, the Turkish empire was constantly in financial distress.
Calouste Gulbenkian, “Mr Five Percent,” would wheel and deal to give a new consortium called the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) the rights to find and develop oil in Mesopotamia.
The TPC was 25% owned by Deutsche Bank, 25% Royal Dutch Shell and 50% by the Turkish National Bank which was a British controlled bank.
But the Turkish National Bank itself was 30% owned by Mr 5% so he actually controlled 15% of the Turkish Petroleum Company.
Eventually Calouste would broker a deal giving himself a 5% non-voting interest in the TPC, 47.5% would go to Anglo-Persia, 22.5% to Deterding’s Royal Dutch Shell and 25% to Deutsche Bank.
With the German’s defeat in World War 1, the French would claim Deutsche Bank’s 25% interest and in 1924 formed a new company by the name of Compagnie Francaise des Petroles (CFP) or modern day Total to oversee its concession in the Middle East.
Later on, American interests of Exxon and Mobil would join the consortium.
(Just imagine if Germany had held on to the concession and championed its own national oil company securing access to oil supplies. The second World War may have turned out much different. Also did you know, Germany is the only major European power without a large national energy company. France - Total, Spain - Repsol, Italy -ENI, Norway-Equinor/Statoil, UK-BP & Shell. My theory is this part of the root cause of the country’s lack of energy security. What are your thoughts?)
CFP/Total would go on to play a role in many of the original concessions in the Middle East after the second World War as shown below.
Although the history of Total goes back close to 100 years, the financial data I was able to obtain only stretches back to the 1970s. I hope you will forgive me.
This post is the financial and operating history of the data I was able to obtain. If you want to view a cool video series of the history of the company check out this YouTube series.
As part of the wave of consolidation sweeping the industry in the late 1990s, CFP/Total merged Elf-Aquitaine and PetroFina and more recently acquired Maersk Oil from the shipping giant.
Shown below is Total Energies oil and gas production history by the entities included in this post.
The production profile of Total for the last 55 years.
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