TotalEnergies will keep its fuel prices in France capped for as long as the Middle East crisis lasts, the French supermajor said, extending the policy first introduced two weeks into the conflict.
TotalEnergies is capping the price of gasoline and diesel at its stations in France to protect consumers from the “exceptional market volatility” since the beginning of the war in the Middle East, the French energy major said in early March, when the conflict was not expected to last this long.
Now the company will keep the fuel price cap policy across all its 3,000 gas stations in France “for as long as the crisis in the Middle East lasts,” it said in a statement.
For May, the price caps remain the same as in April on both gasoline and diesel.
If international oil prices drop, TotalEnergies is committing to pass on any declines in fuel prices onto retail fuel prices without delay, the company added.
Gasoline and diesel prices have soared globally in recent weeks as the blockage at the Strait of Hormuz sent refining cracks to multi-year highs, refineries in the Gulf were shut due to drone strikes, and Asian countries restricted or outright banned exports of fuels to protect their domestic supply amid the uncertainty about the next crude delivery to refineries.
Earlier this week, TotalEnergies raised its interim dividend by 5.9% and boosted the share buyback program to the high end of the guided range after posting a 29% jump in first-quarter earnings from a year earlier, pushed up by the spike in oil prices and very strong oil trading results in the wake of the Iran war.
Higher oil prices in the latter part of the first quarter and strong trading results bolstered the earnings at TotalEnergies, which joins BP in reporting consensus-beating profits.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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