Oil Refinery Strike

Workers at all six of Total SA's French refineries and at six of its 31 fuel depots have been on strike for five days over the uncertain future of a plant in Dunkirk, in northern France. Total said that 119 of the 2,000 Total and Elf gas stations in France had run out of at least one type of gasoline. ExxonMobil Corp.-owned Esso France's two refineries are set to begin their own walkout Tuesday. Together, Total and Esso refineries account for about 70 percent of France's refining capacity. Workers at France's fourth-largest refinery, British-owned chemicals company INEOS, also voted Monday to join the strike. Two more refineries, owned by Switzerland's Petroplus, are scheduled to take a strike vote on Wednesday.

 

CGT strike coordinator Charles Foulard has predicted that France will reach "borderline shortage" in the coming week. The French oil refineries' body, UFIP, said this weekend that France has at least 10 days' worth of fuel stocks.

 

The strike was sparked by workers' concerns about the future of the Dunkirk refinery. The CGT union, which represents a majority of workers in the conflict, insists that Total's Dunkirk refinery must continue to run as it has in the past. CGT meetings to discuss the strike's future are planned at Total refineries Monday. The government has reacted by summoning Total's top executives. On Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Total Chairman Thierry Desmarest for talks about the strike. On Sunday, Total Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie met with Industry Minister Christian Estrosi.

 

Total S.A. (Euronext: FP, NYSE: TOT) is a French oil company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world.

 

Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and production to power generation, transportation, refining, petroleum product marketing, and international crude oil and product trading. Total is also a large-scale chemicals manufacturer. The company has its head office in the La Défense district and in Courbevoie, France, near Paris.  

 

The company was founded after World War I after the French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré rejected the idea of forming a partnership with Royal Dutch Shell in favour of creating an entirely French oil company. At Poincaré's behest, Col. Ernest Mercier, a graduate of the École Polytechnique expert in the electric industry, enlisted the support of ninety banks and companies to found Total on March 28, 1924, as the Compagnie française des pétroles (CFP), literally the "French Company of Petroleums". Petroleum was seen as vital in the case of a new war with Germany. However, the company was from the start a private sector company (it was listed on the Paris Stock Exchange for the first time in 1929). CFP took up the 23.75% share of Deutsche Bank in the Turkish Petroleum Company (renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company), awarded to France as compensation for war damages caused by Germany during World War I by the San Remo conference.

 

In 1985 the company was renamed Total CFP. In 1991 the company name became simply Total. After Total's takeover of Petrofina in 1999, it became known as Total Fina. Afterwards it also acquired Elf Aquitaine. First named TotalFinaElf after the merger in 2000, it was later renamed back to Total in May 2003.

Chart of the major energy companies dubbed "Big Oil" sorted by latest published revenue

 

Total operates in more than 130 countries and has over 96,400 employees.    As recently as 1992, the French government still held 5% of the firm's shares, down from a peak of over thirty percent.     In the time period between 1990 and 1994, foreign ownership of the firm increased from 23% to 44%.

Senior management

 

Christophe de Margerie has been chief executive since 14 February 2007. His total annual compensation for this role is €2,746,335, consisting of a €1,250,000 salary and €1,496,335 bonus.     

 

Esso is an international trade name for ExxonMobil and its related companies. Pronounced /'?so?/ ("S-O"), it is derived from the initials of the pre-1911 Standard Oil, and as such became the focus of much litigation and regulatory restriction in the United States. In 1973, it was largely replaced in the U.S. by the Exxon brand, while Esso remained widely used elsewhere. In most of the world, the Esso brand and the Mobil brand are the primary brand names of ExxonMobil, with the Exxon brand name still in use only in the United States alongside Mobil.

An Esso station in Stabekk, Norway

A combination gasoline/diesel pump at an Exxon in Zelienople, Pennsylvania

History

 

In 1911, Standard Oil was broken up into seven regional companies, each with the rights to the brand "Standard" in certain states (plus a number of other companies that had no territorial rights). Standard Oil of New Jersey ("Jersey Standard") had the rights in that state, plus in Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. By 1941, it had also acquired the rights in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. In those states, it marketed its products under the brand "Esso", the phonetic pronunciation of the letters "S" and "O". It also used the Esso brand in New York and the six New England states, where the Standard Oil Company of New York (Socony - Vacuum, later Socony - Mobil)) had the rights, but did not object to the New Jersey company's use of the trademark (the two companies did not merge until 1998). However, in the other states, the other Standard Oil companies objected and forced Jersey Standard to use other brand names. In most states the company used the trademark "Enco", and in a few "Humble". The other Standard companies likewise were "Standard" or some variant on that in their home states, and another brand name in other states.

 

This situation was confusing to travelers. In 1973, Standard Oil of New Jersey renamed itself as the Exxon Corporation, and adopted that trademark throughout the country. It however maintained the rights to "Standard" and "Esso" in the states where it held those rights, by a token effort, by selling "Esso Diesel" in those states at stations that sell diesel fuel, thus preventing the trademark from being declared abandoned. It retained the "Esso" brand in Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands until 2008, when it sold its stations there to Total S.A.    The ENCO brand name was still used on locations in the Midwest, which were scheduled for abandonment.