Total S.A. Company Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Total S.A. Company - Essay Example The company’s upstream sector is seen to mainly consist of the company’s vast exploration projects for the production of natural gas and crude oil; this is done alongside various gas and electricity developmental activities and coal mining operations. TOTAL’s downstream unit is seen to mainly focus on trading of petroleum products, their marketing as well as refining operations while its chemical division is seen to include the production of various rubber products that are made by its Hutchinson subsidiary. The bulk of the rubber products produced by this subsidiary are usually mostly targeted at the automotive industry. Other chemical products that the company produces include resins, adhesives, inks and paints (Reuters, 2013). When the company was initially formed in 1924 after the first world war, it was initially named as compagnie Françse des PÃ ©troles. At the time of its formation , the French government considered the company as being of critical strategic importance in the event that there happened to be another war with Germany. After the war, the French secured a 25 percent stake in the by then fledgling Turkish Petroleum company whose shares were mostly held by Germany’s Deutsche Bank. ... He incorporated some parts of Orkem chemical group into Total’s various chemical operations. The chemical division was responsible for the production of resins, inks, paints and adhesives. At the time of his taking over the company’s chairmanship, Total company had slowly turned into a complexly organized, extremely bureaucratic and sleepy company and as a result, the company had inadvertently ceded its coveted position of being France’s largest oil company to its rival Elf Aquitaine. Serge managed to turn the company into an aggressive, more modern and sleeker company by abolishing and estimated over two hundred Total company subsidiaries as well as closing down about one-seventh of all of the company’s service stations network (company-Histories.com, 2013), this effectively resulted in the elimination of about 6.500 jobs and saved the oil company hundreds of millions of francs in various expenses. The company also formulated new strategies that helped it defocus its production form the more unstable Middle East and aimed to shift about 50 percent of all its production to areas outside the Middle East. By 1995, the insistence of Tchuruk on ensuring that the company ensured that it beefed up its gas business was instrumental in causing the company to become the world’s third largest gas producer (company-Histories.com, 2013). The company’s name was later changed to Total in the year 1991 when company became listed as a public company and commenced trading on the New Stock Exchange. Tchuruk played a critical role in convincing the French government to ensure that it reduced its direct share holding investment in the oil to 5.4% which was an important move that helped the company increase its own independence as well as its ability to act