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Campaigners frown as TotalEnergies profit soars 68% amid climate concerns – EnviroNews
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According to observers, this summer is proving to be one of the most brutal yet. Intense heatwaves are killing thousands of people, flash floods are submerging entire towns, and wildfires are sweeping through regions once considered safe. These are all symptoms of a climate crisis driven by fossil fuel dependence.
Amid this unfolding emergency, TotalEnergies has announced another quarter of record profits. Those profits have reportedly been boosted by the instability that drives higher oil and gas prices, while ordinary people continue to pay the price through higher fuel costs, rising energy bills, and the growing impacts of climate-fuelled disasters.
TotalEnergies’ adjusted net income jumped by 68% from a year earlier to $6 billion for the second quarter of 2026 as the jump in oil prices and refining margins boosted earnings and cash flows.
The French supermajor on Thursday, July 23, 2026, reported an adjusted net income of $6 billion, which met analyst expectations and rose by 12% from the first quarter and by 68% from the $3.578 billion for the second quarter of 2025.
TotalEnergies attributed the increase to the high-price environment and the rise in refining and petrochemical margins. Strong performance of crude oil and petroleum products trading activities, at the same level as the high first-quarter trading result, also boosted earnings.
“Despite a lower lifting level because of difficulties to access the Strait of Hormuz, Exploration & Production posted adjusted net operating income of $3.2 billion and cash flow of $5.8 billion, up by more than 25% over the quarter, capturing the increase in the average selling price of liquids,” CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, said in a statement.
TotalEnergies’ average oil selling price jumped by $17.90 per barrel compared to the first quarter of 2026.
But 350.org has called for the era of impunity for big polluters to end, adding that there is an opportunity to make that happen at the fifth round of negotiations on the UN Convention on International Tax Cooperation, which opens on Monday, August 3, 2026, in New York.
“This genuinely multilateral forum aims to deliver a global treaty by 2027 to end corporate tax evasion and opacity, and establish fairer taxation rules. Governments could use it to make oil and gas majors pay for their role in the climate crisis, funding lasting protection for affected populations,” submitted the group.
Fanny Petitbon, 350.org Country Manager for France, said: “TotalEnergies’ latest results are not ordinary corporate earnings but a receipt for climate chaos. The company shamelessly cashes in on monstrous profits generated during a period of worsening climate breakdown that it helped fuel, alongside economic disruption and geopolitical conflict. Every spike in fossil fuel prices acts as an unofficial tax on people: increasing the cost of transport, electricity and food, while governments spend billions responding to disasters and shielding households from volatile energy markets.
“Yet TotalEnergies keeps reaping extraordinary rewards from the very instability it helped create. It is time to end this impunity. As governments gather in New York this August to negotiate a UN Tax Convention, they have a historic chance to make polluters pay and fund the protection ordinary people desperately need.”
Zaki Mamdoo, StopEACOP Campaign Coordinator, said: “The wealth celebrated by TotalEnergies’s shareholders and executives is paid for through the ruined lives of so many along the EACOP route who have been made to endure land loss, destroyed livelihoods, food insecurity, repression and the deepening social breakdown produced by displacement and dispossession. These obscene profits are clearly not a measure of success, but an account of organised exploitation. Every billion-dollar margin is extracted from the labour of workers, who produce far more than they are paid, and secured at the expense of communities, who are made to carry the entirety of the social and environmental costs of extraction.”
350.org is calling on the French government to introduce stronger and permanent taxes on fossil fuel companies’ profits, and to ensure the revenue is directed towards climate adaptation and a fast, fair transition away from fossil fuels. This demand is backed by 75% of French people, according to a survey commissioned by Oxfam France.
So far, however, France has been unambitious and obstructive in international negotiations, notably resisting efforts to enshrine the polluter-pays principle in the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. It’s time for France to change course: to stop blocking progress and start championing a treaty that makes polluters pay.