Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Dear shareholders, I am delighted to welcome you today in video conference because we are doing this shareholders meeting in a specific way with Patricia Barbizet and Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, who are administrators, and with Jean-Pierre Sbraire, our CFO. We are delighted to welcome you. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the past two months, we've experienced an exceptional situation. I hope that you, your families, your loved ones, are healthy and well. In this specific context, we've decided with your board to hold this meeting from the HQ in La Défense to preserve everybody's health. you can see that we are at a fair distance from one another on this podium. you were invited to vote prior to the general shareholders meeting, either via internet through your access or sending your vote through the mail or giving a mandate to somebody else.
You were all very numerous to vote, and I'd like to thank you for this. By allowing the shareholders to take part in the important decisions of the group, the annual meeting is a really strong moment. Your group is very attached to this, and in order to preserve this meeting in spite of these specific circumstances, we've decided to set up the means to facilitate your remote participation so you can follow this meeting directly through its streaming from our website, total.com. You can also ask questions via the total.com site and the platform that has been available to the shareholders since the 26th of May, 2020. Like every year, myself, Patricia Barbizet, Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, and Jean-Pierre Sbraire, we will dedicate one hour to answer as many questions as we can, who will be asked to us by a journalist who is the Editor-in-Chief of Boursorama.
The members of the board and the executive committee are also following this meeting distantly. There is also an auditor who is following in the room. I would like to welcome all of our shareholders and all of the interested people wherever they are. I open this meeting. I would like to thank Patricia Barbizet, your Senior Director, and Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, who will become your Senior Director after this meeting. Both of them members of the board who have been the bureau of the general assembly. I'd like to name Jean-Pierre Sbraire as Secretary of this quorum. I would like to inform you that all of the legal documents are here that are to be presented to this meeting were on this desk. I am not going to read through the list of them. I'm going to talk about the quorum.
You were many to express your vote before the meeting by correspondence or via the internet. 1/3 of the shareholders have used Vot access before the shareholders meeting. We like to thank you, and we encourage you to use this. According to the presence sheet, 26,109 shareholders have expressed a vote in this meeting. There's 1.6 billion votes, a little bit more than 1.6 billion shares expressed with the votes, including the double votes. This number of shares is above the quorum necessary to deliver the extraordinary and ordinary shareholders meeting, hence one quarter of the shares necessary for this. I would like to remind you that this meeting is brought together to deliberate on the points in the brochure that is available to you on the total.com website. I am not going to read each of the motions that are submitted to the vote.
We will see this when we look at the actual votes. With Patricia Barbizet and Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, we're going to talk about various topics over the course of this meeting. I am going to speak to talk about the way in which the group has been organized to face the health crisis that we need to face, but also the economic crisis that we're facing given the freeze of the global economy and of the situation in the oil market. I will also talk about the climate ambition of the company. Traditionally, you have the CFO talk about the revenue of the previous period, and it's not that Jean-Pierre Sbraire was afraid of this, but we felt that 2019 was too far into the future.
I will remind you what was essential, but we wanted to focus more on the extraordinary activity and global situation that deserves all of our attention. Next, Patricia Barbizet will talk about the governance of the company. She will talk about the actions of the board during 2019, and the conclusions that she drew from the road shows that she has carried out in London and in Paris. She will also present the elements of compensation for your CEO and Chairman. Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette will talk about the composition of your new board, the policy of compensation of the board members, and the future and her vision as Senior Director. Before I give my state of the union, I wanted to present a small film to you that illustrates the way in which the group has organized itself to continue to operate with the COVID-19 pandemics.
This video shows you that the health of our employees and our partners is, like safety, a value of the group. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, once again, hello everyone. I am hoping that there are many of you following this exceptional general shareholders meeting directly on our website. Exceptional is the word, and for many reasons. It's exceptional because it's the first time, and I hope the last one, that we're holding this meeting as a to preserve the health of all. It is also exceptional because we are living through historical moments in the history of our planet. We are facing several crises and challenges that are extraordinary. We are going to meet them together as shareholders, as employees, as clients, as suppliers, and as citizens. First of all, the health crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has translated itself by lockdown measures that were without precedent on the scope of the planet. It has ground global economy to a halt. It has also led to a crisis of the hydrocarbon market like never before. We also have the major challenge of the climate change. The work of the IPCC, published in September of 2019, have reminded us the necessity to act to reach this collective ambition of carbon neutrality by 2040. I'd like to come back to all of this. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic. The health crisis linked to the coronavirus that has spread throughout the world is impacting us very strongly, whether it is in our personal lives or in our professional lives.
The board and myself would like to thank all of those who are mobilized in the face of COVID-19, and more specifically, the employees of the group who are ensuring the continuing of our operations at the service of our client while respecting the health regulations. Solidarity, which is a value of the group, really takes its full sense in these extraordinary measures. In COVID-19, the priority of the group is to conserve the health of our employees and to ensure the continuity of our operations safely. Many employees are working from home. On average, 25,000 people can work on the network at the same time, and it is working. On the ground, we've had to reorganize our operations and set up shifts. Of course, we've made available the indispensable protection equipment like masks and sanitizer.
Wearing a mask is now mandatory within Total in all collective spaces, and the temperature is systematically taken before people enter one of the group's sites. All of the sites were reorganized to preserve the social distance between everybody. This has led us to review the way in which we work, but through the efforts and the discipline of everybody, it is working. Looking at our operations, we have set up plans to continue our operations by limiting our teams to the essential people. A health control is carried out at the entrance of all our sites, and especially before accessing our offshore platform. Our customers are also at the heart of our concerns. Talking about essential services, our service station network remained open at 95% with the implementation of the necessary health measures, making it available to continue to supply economic activities and public services, especially healthcare workers.
The supply of gas and electricity is ensured for all of our customers, especially in the way as we've also ensured the supply of our plastics. In these extraordinary moments, the group has also wanted to show solidarity with the communities in the country in which we operate. In France, we have made available to the hospitals and the retirement homes some gasoline vouchers for EUR 50 million. More than 2.4 million healthcare workers have received these vouchers of EUR 30. Solidarity is also the fact that we did not want to call on the French state to support us. We felt that the subsidies were better used by companies that used more. We've made available to our employees some gasoline vouchers in Cambodia, in Morocco, and in other countries. In Kenya, our affiliate has produced sanitizer.
In Thailand, we have given the commodities to produce 3D-printed medical devices and protection equipment. The foundation Total has granted EUR 5 million for the Institut Pasteur and hospitals, and health workers working on the COVID-19. In this fight against COVID-19, Total is a player that is committed, that is exacting and being professionally, internally, and externally. For your group, this health crisis also was experienced with an oil crisis. I want to say that the strategy of the group since the last major crisis in 2015, 2016, makes it possible for the group to be more resilient facing this new crisis, because our fundamental are good. First of all, we have a production cost for oil close to $50 /bbl , which is one of the lowest in the industry, and it's twice as low as in 2014.
We have a discipline on our organic investments that is at EUR 10 billion, which is much lower than 2014 and 2015. We also have an organic breakeven point below $25 /bbl . We also have a very solid balance sheet with a debt below 20%. This is our cost-saving culture that has made a great part to assets with a low breakeven point. This gives us a competitive advantage faced with our peers that help us face this tempest in the best possible conditions. From this point of view, 2019 has strengthened us. As I said, 2019 feels very far away, at the same time, given the fact that our meeting is to deliberate on these revenue, we should come back to them because they highlight the strength of our group.
In 2019, in an average barrel price of $64, lower by 20% than in 2018, the group has generated a cash flow of EUR 28.5 billion with a strong growth of EUR 2.4 billion compared to 2019 with a positive contribution from all of the sectors. The group has recorded an adjusted annual revenue of EUR 11.5 billion, which indeed was a decrease of 13%, but still an increase. In the upstream, the production has reached 3 million bpd for the first time in the history of the group. Between 2014 and 2019, the productions of the group have grown by 40%. This is also why the group is better able to face the crisis than it was in 2014.
The IGRP sector, who is Integrated Gas, Renewables & Powers, has seen an increase of 80% of its cash flow in 2019 at $3.7 billion because of the very strong growth of the production and sales of LNG. The downstream has shown a stable cash flow at $6.6 billion in spite of a decrease of the refining margins and the petrochemical margins by 10%. In 2019, the organic cash flow breakeven before dividend was below $25 /bbl with a profitability of equity above 10%. The gearing at the end of 2019 was 17%. I can say that at the end of 2019, the results of the group were very solid with a level of dividend that we set of EUR 2.68 per action. 2019 is very far away from us because since March, the world has very much changed, specifically for Total.
The decrease of the demand for energy linked to the grinding to a halt of global economy because of the pandemic has been doubled by a crisis of supply because of the decisions by some producing countries that decided to increase their production while demand decreased. This created a decrease of the prices, and the market has worked well, and it has brought many different players back to reason, because there's been a decrease of 10 million bpd from the OPEC plus countries, with Saudi and Russia ahead of them. There was also a voluntary decision of North American producers in the U.S. and Canada, who have closed wells and reduced their production by 3 million bpd . This policy works because it is 14 million - 15 million bpd that were removed in May.
In spite of this, stocks continue to increase because the demand decreased very strongly. It is only going to pick up when lockdown measures ease. It is going to take time to reduce these stocks, and this is going to have an impact on the price of hydrocarbons over the next several months. The group had to react to adjust quickly to this new context, because a barrel at $30 or $35 instead of $60 is what we'd anticipated for 2020, is a difference of $9 billion in earnings for the year. Beyond the impact of the prices of oil and gas, we also have the impact on our activities, because once again, the decrease of demand means less production, less operations of our refineries, and less customers in our service station. This has an impact for 2020.
In the upstream, we anticipate a production of 2.95 million bpd , which is a decrease of 5% compared to our previous forecast for 2020. Given the decrease in demand, plus the exceptional quotas that were decided by OPEC that were applying, there were voluntary measures to decrease in Canada. There's also a situation that has to do with the conflict in Libya. In the downstream, we feel that the rate of use for our refineries will revolve around 70% in 2020, which is 15 percentage point less than 2019, which is going to impact the cash flow from refining. Marketing and services is also suffering from the decrease in demand in Europe. For the second quarter, we're seeing an average decrease of 50% of the consumption.
At the same time, we can hope that if it is happening, like the easing of lockdown in China, the sales will be back to normal over the next few months. It is part of the operational uncertainties that we have to face. Overall, this decrease of activity is going to be shown through a decrease in earnings of EUR 3 billion. We expect this gap to be EUR 12 billion, and we need to fill this gap with our action plan. We need to adjust ourselves and trust on ourselves, rely on our culture of industrial excellence. The driver performance is one of the values of the group. It is in this mindset that I have announced that we will not ask for any subsidies from the French state.
Relying on ourself, retaining our independence, this is something that the group is strong enough to do to once again face the crisis all alone. Relying on ourselves means excelling on what we control. We don't control the price of hydrocarbons. What we do control is the four pillars that are at the heart of our industrial culture, which is HSE, cost discipline, and cash. This mobilizes all of the group, which are our priorities today. Safety in 2020 is not just the safety, it's all of the HSE dimension, which is health, safety, and the environment that are the first pillar of our action plan to show our priority, making sure everybody remains healthy. It also shows our ambition in terms of climate, which is the environmental piece.
Availability is our operational excellence, because we need to make the most of our industrial assets by giving the priority to the continuity of our actions in order to be able to use them as much as possible in planning for demand to pick up. Costs are also the control of our investment expenditures in order to preserve cash. Cash is the sinews of war, the oxygen of the group. This is why we're focusing all of our attention on this in these difficult times. The action plan that we have set up is a significant effort because we are going to try to preserve EUR 7.5 billion in the cash flow of the group. There are three main parts. The first part is a savings program aiming at EUR 1 billion in savings.
In order to do this, we want all of our teams to be mobilized, and this is why we have maintained our decisions to increase wages and bonuses in 2019, like we've maintained our dividend for our shareholders. We've wanted to strongly control our recruitment, but we want to give the priority to our team. In this context, because of the efforts that will be asked from all of the employees of the group, if the context wasn't improving, to set an example, I've suggested to the board, that has accepted it independently from your votes, to reduce my own fixed compensation by 25% starting in May for the rest of the year. The members of the board, and I'd like to thank them for it, wanted to join me in this effort, and they've also given up on 25% of their compensation starting today for the rest of 2020.
The executive committee didn't want to leave me alone. They've also decided to decrease their compensation by 10% until the end of the year to once again set an example. The second part of our action plan is to reduce and limit our net investments, limit them to EUR 14 billion this year, when previously we had targeted EUR 18 billion. You might be concerned by this reduction of investments, but we're doing this without jeopardizing the future of the group. We were able to do this because we were able to draw the lessons from our level of investments in 2014, 2015, by maintaining a degree of flexibility through short cycle projects and by setting up contracts that are easy to interrupt as soon as the crisis arose. I'd like to thank all of our teams for drawing the lessons of 2014, 2015 to set up such contracts.
We were also able to reduce our investment. We decided to be very selective in the choice of our acquisitions. We had negotiated the possibility in case Oxy couldn't sell the assets in Algeria. We decided to forego buying the assets in Ghana, which were not operated. This allowed us to preserve the financial flexibility of the company to face the uncertainties, but also to face the opportunities that arise in the current context. The acquisition of Mozambique that was carried out in September of 2019 was really the jewel of the crown of Anadarko Assets in Africa. It was also a great success for the group, so we should not regret the decisions that we have taken this year, given the conditions of accessing this asset in Mozambique. We were able to really benefit from this opportunity.
In Uganda, we have announced that for less than $2 of a barrel, we would buy all of the shares of Tullow to be able to launch this project by 2020. This reduction of investment is not done jeopardizing the future of the group. All of the major projects that were launched over the past several years, like Arctic LNG, are continuing. On the other hand, we've decided that our strategy of development in low carbon electricity would not be impacted. We maintain the level of investments planned between $1.5 billion $2 billion this year, probably closer $2 billion. the third step of our action plan was asking our shareholders to pitch in by changing our policy compared to what it was at the beginning of the year.
For the past several years, we've announced our policy that made investments, dividend, debt of the group, and then share buyback. We have suspended our share buyback program that was supposed to $2 billion in 2020 if the barrel was at $ 60. We've saved $1.5 billion, given that we've already purchased $550 million in shares during the first quarter. We have maintained the dividend, today we'd like to suggest paying the rest as scrip, allowing to save $1 billion in cash if the shareholders support us in this. Last act of caution and responsibility is that we have suspended the annual growth objective of 5% that we announced in September of 2019, coming back from the first payment of 2020 at the level of the first payment of 2019.
This effort that we're asking our shareholder gives me the opportunity when there's a debate in the country to remind you of what the mindset is for a board in terms of policy of return to the shareholder. First of all, confidence. Next, caution and responsibility, because the world is full of uncertainties. Lastly, the dialogue that we always want to privilege. We find a lot of value in our relationship with our shareholders over the long term. For us, it's a matter of trust, and this trust with our shareholders exists. We want to protect it. We believe in our financial and economic fundamentals, and we want to translate this trust in our relationship with the shareholders. Total is lucky enough to have 450,000 individual shareholders, including 400,000 in France. They are faithful, they are stable, and we want to develop this.
For these, the dividend is additional revenue for them because on average it is EUR 1,000, so it's significant for them. Amongst these individual shareholders, there's a group very dear to my heart. It is our employees, 60,000 of them, with also an additional 40,000 retirees from the group. They receive, on average, EUR 4,000 of dividend per year, which is really significant. When I hear that there's a conflict between the interests of the shareholders of Total and the payment of the dividend, it is not knowing the reality of the shareholdership within Total. This is why we've continued to develop our employee shareholders within the group to align the interest of our two main stakeholders, who are our employees and our stakeholders.
The employees of the group, in spite of the troubled markets, have confirmed their loyalty to the company by supporting the capital increase for the employees and by subscribing to it. More than 45,000 employees have used this capital increase, bringing it to EUR 340 million, which is a 10% increase compared to 2019. As a CEO, I'm extremely proud of this, and it really makes me feel confident that we'll face the storm together. In this delicate context, we are both confident but cautious. Confident in our fundamentals, but cautious faced with the extraordinary situation that we're going through. It is because we trust in our fundamentals that we did not want to make any hasty decisions. We want to take the time to have a clearer vision on the macroeconomic environment.
We've decided to maintain our first payment of the dividend at EUR 0.66 per share, identical to the first one in 2019. Caution has dictated giving up on the 5% annual growth decided in a very different context. We're also going to maintain the dividend of 2019 at the level that we had planned before the pandemic at EUR 2.68 per share. To bring together this trust and this caution, the group would like to suggest paying the dividend in new scrip dividend. The board and myself rely on you to really consider this option, because it's a way to really recompense the faithful shareholders because they will be able to have a discount of 10%, the rate having been set at EUR 28.8 per share.
Your board has decided to not suggest the option of dividend in shares for the rest of 2020, feeling that the balance sheet of the group is strong enough and to avoid the dilution of our share or the payment of dividend resting on the group following the crisis. The board believes in the fundamental of the groups, because with a barrel around 50, the group can both finance the investments that it needs to implement its medium and long-term strategy and to pay the dividend. In the future, if we had to face a crisis over a longer duration, if the price of the barrel would remain below 30 bbl for a long time, we'd need to react and take some new measures.
If we had to review our policy of return to the shareholder, we would make this decision after engaging our shareholders in this discussion, similarly to what we did with our climate ambition. Talking about our medium and long-term strategy to meet climate change, this is the third challenge that I've mentioned in my introduction. Taking our responsibility to face the short-term challenges that I've just described, your group is still continuing the implementation of its medium and long-term strategy as a major player in energy transition. The announcement of a new climate ambition for the group to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 in the world with the whole of society is completely in line and supported by Total's strategy to become a multi-energy group.
As I explained to you during our previous shareholders meeting, the mission of Total is to provide an energy that is more available, more affordable, and cleaner and accessible to the greatest number of people. This is how we will become the major for responsible energy. The global energy mix needs to evolve to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Total is integrating this evolution in its strategy by supporting the use of natural gas, but also biogas and hydrogen by investing in low-carbon electricity, essentially produced from renewables, by targeting its investments in oil on low-cost oil, and by investing in carbon sinks that are indispensable to carbon neutrality, which are either natural solutions or capture and storage of CO2. We're already implementing this ambition by developing ourselves as a multi-energy group with an integrated strategy.
We feel that this low-carbon energy is a competitive advantage that is creating long-term value for our shareholders, for the sustainability of the company, the sustainability of our cash flow, and our return to shareholders. This is why we wanted to take into account the expectation of society and of our investors with regard to the climate that are increasingly strong. We have started a dialogue with Climate Action 100+, to which financial institutions participate which are 25% of our equity. Total is ready to commit to a. Has demonstrated this twice, preparing this shareholders meeting, working with Climate Action 100+, but through a dialogue with another shareholder that has written the mission of your board in terms of corporate social responsibility.
This constructive dialogue is preferable to a resolution that we were threatened with during several weeks, and the contents of which was only made clear to us when it was filed. We have wanted to still comply with shareholder democracy by submitting this motion to a vote. Many of our shareholders understood this. As Chairman of your board, I will always try to privilege a constructive dialogue with our shareholders and with the Senior Director who is also committed in this dialogue with our shareholders, like Patricia Barbizet was with me in the discussion with the group Climate Action 100+. Your board has so adopted a new climate policy with a neutrality of our carbon by 2050 for all of the company and all of our activities from production to the use of our products by our client.
It is a strong and demanding ambition that we won't be able to meet alone. We'll meet it with our customers, with civil society, with the governments of the countries in which we operate, because the governments will need to implement the policies to support this carbon neutrality. On the road to this ambition, we have three objectives as to our greenhouse gas emissions. First of all, when we talk about our greenhouse gas emissions, and I apologize for my technicality here, there are the emissions of our facilities, what the experts call Scope 1 and 2. For these emissions, we are clearly responsible for them. We can act on them because once again, we are talking about the emissions of our industrial operation. We have an objective of zero net emissions for Total's global operation, in 2050 or before.
We have an intermediate objective that we will reduce to 45 million ton. We will get there through our energy efficiency by eliminating our routine flaring, by improving our processes, and by reducing our methane emissions in our gas production. Because there will be residual emission, we want to invest in solutions allowing to have negative emission like investments in forest and the capture and storage of CO2. Once again, these are the emissions from our operations, from our facilities, from our plants and our platforms. There are other emissions, the ones that we are not directly responsible for because they are indirectly tied to our products as used by our client. We're not responsible for these because they depend upon the choice of consumption of energy of our clients.
Total does not manufacture planes or cars or concrete, and it's not Total that is going to decide whether a plane is going to use kerosene or electricity or hydrogen to fly. We supply energy products that are used, that are transformed by other industries to supply services and products. Of course, we can act on the offer of our energy products, but only technical and technological evolutions in the methods of using the energy supported by public policy will actually change this demand for energy. It is not supply that is creating the demand. It is a fundamental of economics, and it's very visible in the energy world. Civil society wants us to contribute to decreasing these indirect Scope 3 emission. We've decided to set ourselves a global ambition. We've decided to go further from a European perspective through an actual commitment.
Our global ambition is to reduce the average carbon intensity of our offer of energy products that we're selling to our customers by 60% with intermediate step, 15% in 2030 and 40% in 2040. If we look at our peers, it is the strongest ambition in terms of absolute value, in terms of our carbon emission. The commitment that we are taking with these indirect emissions of the products that our customers use is at the level of the European Union. We are there taking a commitment. Europe is 60% of our sales, so this is a strong commitment because we're talking about 60% of the Scope 3 emissions. We're taking this commitment because Europe is making this commitment for itself. Once again, we can't get there alone.
Europe is going to adopt policies to regulate this in line with the price of carbon, in line with its ambition of carbon neutrality. Total wants to be a committed citizen within Europe and to draw its strength from this European policy. We actively support policies favorable to carbon neutrality, including a price for CO2, and we mobilize our resources not only to reduce our own emissions, but to help our customers reach this carbon neutrality. Let's be clear, we're ready to take this commitment in other geographies of the world that would have the same objective as Europe. This is why we're saying that we're sharing the ambition to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 together with society. What does this really mean for the strategy of Total? This strengthens our objective to become a multi-energy group.
In 2015, the mix of our sales was 66% oil, 33% gas, and less than 1% of gas-based electricity. In five years, our mix has evolved because last year we were only selling 55% of oil products, 40% of natural gas, and 5% of electrons. To get to a 15% carbon intensity reduction by 2030, we need to continue our development in renewable energy to get to a 15% electricity in our sales, with an oil product only representing 45% of the sales of the group and gas 40%.
If we look forward to 2050 to meet this ambition of reducing our carbon intensity by 60%, our mix would've changed because we would sell 40% of green renewable electricity, 40% of gas, which are a mix of natural gas and green gas produced from hydrogen or biogas, and only 20% of oil products, 3/4 from oil and 1/4 from biofuels. This is the multi-energy group that we want to build and that we are concretely building right now. In 2019, we had set ourselves objectives that seem very ambitious by 2025, invest in 25 GW of renewables and to have 10 million of residential clients. Since the start of 2020, we have announced many projects for renewable electricity, more than 5 GW in Spain, in Qatar, in France and India, and a first floating offshore wind in Wales. We're also working on new projects.
We've announced the acquisition of the portfolio of EDP in Spain with, in 2021, more than 8.5 million residential customers for gas and electricity in France, Belgium, and Spain. We also want to draw full advantage of the strong growth of electric mobility that is going to come to substitute itself to the thermal engine. We've created a company with PSA and soon Renault to develop the manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles. This is one of the reasons for bringing the knowhow of Saft on board since 2016. We're also taking a position on the market of charging stations, with 20,000 charging stations in the greater Amsterdam area. This roadmap confirms more than ever the integration of climate in our strategy and its implementation of our activity. We are a reliable long-term player in this energy transition.
This is in line with our ambition to offer a more secure, a more affordable, a cleaner, and more accessible energy because, and I'm repeating myself, we have the strong conviction that this low-carbon strategy is a competitive advantage that is going to create some long-term value for our shareholders, for the sustainability of our company, and of a return to shareholders. Unlike what I can often read, Total is moving, Total is changing. Carbon neutrality within Total is not just words. It's not just an aspiration. It is a roadmap that we've decided to embark upon with resolve. It is concrete investments, skills that are evolving, a road that will require to be demanding of ourselves and patient with our stakeholders.
It will ask us to rely on ourselves and on our values, which are safety, respect of the other, pioneer spirit, the strength of solidarity, and a taste for performance. Thank you for your attention.
I'm going to yield the floor to Patricia Barbizet, Senior Director of the board. We have over 1,000 people with us online, so you're actually talking to no one right now in this room, Patricia, but you actually have 1,000 people listening to you. No pressure.
Thank you, and good morning to everyone following us live. Thank you. As Senior Director, I would like to start by paying tribute to the group staff, because everywhere you're confronted to the COVID-19 pandemics, you're all mobilized to continue our activities for all our clients. I'd like to address three things during my presentation. First, I'd like to talk about the activities of the board during 2019. I will share the different conclusions of the meetings held with other directors and shareholders during two road shows in London and Paris. Finally, I will talk about the compensation policy of your CEO.
I will then give the floor to Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette in order to talk about the compensation of the board, which you'll vote on. She will take my position as Senior Director following this meeting, because after 10 years within the board, I won't be independent administrator anymore, and therefore I won't be able to remain Senior Director as I have been since 2015, alongside Patrick Pouyanné. Your board is particularly active and committed. It has met over 10 times in 2019 with an attendance rate that is really high, with 94.2% of the directors. We also had an executive session, so a meeting with independent directors chaired by the Senior Director. The four specialized committees, so audit, governance and ethics, compensation, strategy and CSR, are working under the responsibility and for the interest of the board.
17 working sessions in 2019, and again, a very high attendance rate with almost 95% on average for all four committees. During the sessions that I just mentioned, the board determines the strategy for the group. It reviews the financial situation and studies the main projects of the group. I selected five projects, the most striking ones, in order to illustrate what we have been doing as board in the past 12 months. On May 3rd, the board has approved the acquisition project for Anadarko assets, including and also Mozambique GNL acquisition, which reinforced the position of the group as second group worldwide. On May 29th, we approved a project in Brazil. We also had the final decision made on the Arctic LNG 2 in Russia project.
These projects are a good example of the growth strategy of the group, relying on its strength, including Africa, GNL, and deep offshore. In October, we held a meeting in Copenhagen, where since we bought out Maersk Oil's assets in 2018, more than 400 employees of Total. It was the opportunity to approve the transformation project of a company as a European company. It was consistent with the economic reality of the group because more than 70% of its revenue is realized in Europe and accounts for over 60% of its staff. Finally, in March 2020, we studied the partnership project with Adani, the Adani Group in India, a country where the group would like to strengthen its position, including in liquefied gas and solar. Which shows our ambition to have more renewable energy by 2025.
This partnership is a real symbol of our commitment in low carbon energies, and it contributes concretely to the energy transformation in a country, India, a key country for climate change, given its energy mix and its population, and its core-oriented markets. As Senior Director, I have been the key focal point between shareholders and the CEO. We've therefore had meetings with our shareholders for more transparency and to restore a dialogue. In this regard, I organized two roadshows in London and Paris, during which I met six institutional shareholders. I also, with your CEO, took part in a meeting with a coalition of investors, Climate Action 100+. Total has long-term relationships with its shareholders, and these meetings force open and transparent dialogue and therefore contribute to enriching the board's work. From these meetings, four themes were highlighted and were discussed with investors.
First, the board itself, its composition, the skills amongst the board, as well as its functioning. These are essential for good governance and a good balance of powers within the company. For instance, how the senior administrator interacts with the CEO, how we make sure that we have good complementarity across all the profiles within the board. The training of administrators and succession plan were also addressed with different shareholders. Climate and energy transition are at the heart of our activities within the company and are as many opportunities for Total. We addressed many topics during these meetings. What is the role and responsibilities of the board in this regard? What are the skills of the administrators or directors rather on these topics? Finally, what are the objectives of the group in terms of carbon neutrality and the change and evolution of its energy mix?
As described by your CEO, this shows the strategy and ambition of the group, which aims at carbon neutrality by 2050 in line with society. Generally speaking, the directors wanted to understand my position as Senior Director on the growing importance of social governance and environmental aspects, but also on my role as Senior Director and on diversity of profiles. Finally, last theme, the compensation of the CEO. We had discussions on the compensation ratio as well as on the integration of ESG criteria in the decision with regards to compensation of the CEO. Finally, the relationship between compensation and climate-related objectives. Finally, I'd like to talk about the CEO's compensation for 2019. Your CEO had an annual fixed compensation of EUR 1,400,000. It hasn't changed since 2016.
The variable portion, subject to resolution 12, reached EUR 2,378,300, so 169.88% of the annual fixed compensation, knowing that the maximum was 180%. There were four fatal accidents in the group in 2019, and therefore we did not reach the necessary 13% for the long-term element performance criteria. Finally, all the objectives that had been set have been fulfilled. The final number of shares attributed will depend on the return of the share of the cash flow net per share in comparison with its competitors and the break-even cash point before dividends. The attribution of these shares will happen in three years. These performance shares attributed to the CEO are part of a larger scheme for over 11,000 employees of the group.
When it comes to the compensation of your CEO for 2020, the one that will be voted upon as part of resolution 13, there are the same three main components as 2019, and it hasn't changed. The amounts for 2018 for the term of the CEO are the same this year. The compensation is there for the following. Annual fixed compensation hasn't changed, with a maximum of 180% for the variable and 72,000 attributed to on March 18th, 2020, subject to performance. Let me highlight the fact that given the current economic situation, given the pandemic of COVID-19 and the savings plan for the company, in order to set an example, the CEO has offered to have his fixed compensation decreased by 25% starting May 2020.
Given the variable compensation, which I'm going to present to you in a second, Patrick Pouyanné's compensation for 2020 will decrease by over 30% as compared to 2019. The variable compensation for 2020 of the CEO, as you can see, the maximum amount won't change, just like the quantifiable or weight of criterias, as well as personal contribution, are still 140% and 40% maximum of the fixed compensation. Last year, we added a quantitative criteria, which is maintained for 2020, on the decrease of greenhouse gases emissions. This year, there's a new criteria with regards to personal contribution that was adjusted in order to reinforce the criteria related to development of activities, low carbon activities, gas and renewables, which is in line, again, with the development of the group's strategy as well as its new climate ambition.
Given the current economic and unprecedented context that the group is facing, clearly, some criteria such as [ROACE] and debt will decrease, and therefore the variable will be variable. Hence, my previous comment on the expected decrease of the compensation of Patrick Pouyanné by more than 30% compared to 2019. This presentation is the conclusion of my mission as senior administrator of the group. I have been in this position for 2015. It was a great pleasure and an honor. I would like to thank the board for proposing the renewal of my term during this meeting, which will allow me to continue to take part in the works of this committee and of this board. Thank you. I would like to give the floor to Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette.
Thank you.
While Marie-Christine stands up, I'd like to say on behalf of the board, but also on my behalf, I would like to thank Patricia for inviting the role of Senior Director when I suggested to create this position so as to have good governance and balanced governance for the group. We've spent a lot of time together, and you have a different vision on business than myself. You have really helped me take a step back on a lot of things in order to really steer the group, and especially given the current context, you need to take a step back, especially when managing such a big group as Total. Thank you very much for continuing to work within the board. I think this is part of how the group creates its transitions, how it plans its transitions. I think it's inspired of the strength of the company.
Thank you. Marie-Christine, you have the floor. You can introduce yourself and as future Senior Director, you can introduce yourself.
I would like to add to what you said. I would like to thank Patricia, who was an incredible Senior Director. Dear shareholders, good morning. Unfortunately, we cannot see you, but we know that you're following us from the comfort of your home. In 2011, you showed me your trust by appointing me director of your group, and you're renewing this trust for the third time this year. I am very deeply honored to follow in the footsteps of Patricia Barbizet as Senior Director. I would like to thank specifically Patrick Pouyanné, as well as the members of the board, for trusting me with this new position.
I would like to give you the new composition of the board with the compensation of the directors, as well as share with you the missions of the board that I will be leading as future Senior Director. We will have an enlarged board of directors with 13 members, so one more member compared to last year, with two employee directors in compliance with the PACTE Law. One of them will be appointed by the central CSR committee or the central economic social committee, and another one that will be appointed by the European committee. The renewal of the terms of Patricia Barbizet, myself, and Mark Cutifani will be proposed during this assembly. Jérôme Contamine has been newly appointed, and he will bring his energy-related and financial-related experience to the board.
The board would like to thank, more specifically, Mr. Carlos Tavares, who, given his responsibility as head of the PSA Group, engaged in a large fusion or merger project, hasn't asked for the renewal of his term, but we'd like to thank him for the quality of his works as part of the board since May 26th, 2017. Thank you, Carlos. To conclude, the board, and for a long time, has been balanced in terms of gender, independent at 80%, with great complementarity in terms of skills with economy, finance, law, and energy, and has great expertise in a wide variety of activities, raw materials, transportation, and electricity. Now, when it comes to compensation, the compensation of your directors, two resolutions will be subject to approval.
The first one on the left-hand side, the yellow one, you can see that you will have to approve the compensation for 2019 of social directors. This amount has been set for a few years for each director based on attendance at each meeting or committee. In compliance with the compensation rule, the amount for 2019 compensation should have been EUR 1,605,500. It was brought to EUR 1.4 million, the maximum envelope, as set during the general assembly in 2013. Hence, the 11th resolution, as you can see in blue on the screen, subject to approval, the maximum amount for directors for 2020. The compensation policy includes a fixed part and a variable part based on attendance and of each director to the different meetings. The board would like to revise the maximum annual envelope to EUR 1,750,000.
First, given the higher number of members, but also given the higher number of meetings for the CSR, but also the strategy committee, given that their scopes have been enlarged to environmental and social activists of the group. However, I would like to underscore that this increase, which will be subject to vote, is subject to the decision of the board. Given the COVID situation, we would like, in solidarity, to reduce by 25% the 2020 compensation of the directors starting May 1st. Given the savings plan within the company and the current economic situation, the board has therefore decided to give up 25% of its compensation starting this shareholders meeting. Last item, the missions of the Senior Director, Patricia Barbizet, has showed and implemented all these missions in 2019 and before.
Here, I would like to give you an overview of the different missions that have been applied throughout the years. I commit to fulfilling these missions with willpower and enthusiasm because Total is a formidable company, so is her. Its CEO since 2015. Upon decision of Patrick Pouyanné. The position of Senior Director has been created in order to ensure good balance of powers within the group. Its role is crucial in order to guarantee good governance within the board. In this regard, it presides the Ethics and Governance Committee. It ensures the good functioning of the board, and in this matter, it presides the executive session, which is a meeting during which, at least once a year, all the non-executive directors and non-employee directors without the CEO meet. Therefore, it allows independent directors to take stock on the way the board is working.
In this same spirit, the Senior Director also takes part in the discussions when it comes to governance, as Patricia Barbizet has done in her presentation. The Senior Director is the main focal point for prevention of conflict of interest and can also ask to convene the board with at least 1/3 of the directors. To conclude, the Senior Director is the main focal point for the CEO on all major topics pertaining to the group, such as the preparation of the meetings of the board. Before I give back the floor for the end of what's on the agenda, and before that, I would like to show you a video on our new member, Jérôme.
I'm an independent administrator within Societe Generale
During my career, I have held the operational and financial responsibility as CFO for Sanofi and General Executive of Veolia Environnement. I was also fortunate to work for 12 years with Elf Aquitaine and with Total. I held several positions in Elf EP as a general manager for Norway and throughout the region. I'm aware of the issues of the Group Total as to the economic context, the volatility of the price of oil and the changes of energy transition and the major role that the group is playing. For me, it will be a great honor to have your trust and to have the opportunity to be a member of Total's board. Thank you very much.
I've reopened it. I apologize. We're really live. This is not recorded. You wanted a demonstration. You just had it. I will continue with the general shareholders meeting.
All of these documents were made available to the shareholders and shared with them beforehand upon request. They are part of the documents that were communicated to the shareholders and in the invitation to this general shareholders meeting. I am now going to give the floor to the auditors. It is Mr. Laurent Vitse from Ernst & Young Audit who is going to present the various accounts.
Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, hello. I am happy to present the reports in the name of EY and KPMG, their reports. These reports are featured among the documents that you have available. These are the report on the social and consolidated account of the year, and then the additional report, and then the report on the potential operations on the capital. I'm now going to present the essential points on the annual accounts.
In compliance with our duties, this forces us to look whether there are no anomalies. This report is presented from page 440 to 443 of the document. In our report, we have the audit of the participation of the company. In liaison with the first motion of your assembly, we say that all of the accounts are valid. We have no observation on the report for the management and the report of the board on the company's governance. Concerning the consolidated account, our report is from page 282 to 285 of the document. Our audit approach took into account the specificities of the activity of your group in terms of activity, organization, accounting, and internal control. The audit and administration committees were involved with our work.
We have presented the two key points of the audit which pertain the evaluation of the depreciation of the non-current asset of the EP assets of the group and of the incidents of the estimation of proven reserves of hydrocarbons in production. With the new IFRS accounting rules, we have emitted a technical observation on the change of accounting rules that is featured in the appendix. In liaison with the second motion of our assembly, we certify without reservations the accounts presented for 2019. Motion five covers the regulatory convention of Total. There are new convention submitted to your approval. The convention of the availability of the premises for United Way Alliance had already been approved. In link with resolutions 15 - 21 of the motions, we have no reservations with the modalities and the information in the report.
In line with resolutions 15 - 20, we may establish additional reports to finalize these capital movements of your board. These are our various reports concerning 2019. I would like to thank you for your attention.
I would like to thank the auditors for their report and for their certification. We are now getting to the interaction that we have with our shareholders, the written questions and the debate. Before we answer these on this platform from total.com, I would like to say that five shareholders have submitted written questions within the regulations. They've asked many questions, so we're now going to read our answers, but the text of these questions and the answers can be read on the total.com website on the Shareholders tab, because I believe that if I spend my time reading this is going to take the remaining hour.
I'm now going to open the discussion on the topics that are featured on the agenda of this general shareholders meeting. As I said in the beginning, to improve the exchange between us on last Tuesday, we've opened a dedicated platform on total.com, on which you raised many questions. I'd like to welcome Laurent Grassin. He is a journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Boursorama that many of you listen to regularly. He accepted to be the voice of your questions and emcee the debates between myself, Patricia Barbizet, Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, and Jean-Pierre Sbraire . The floor is yours.
Thank you, Mr. President. Since Tuesday, indirectly, you have raised your question. You'll be able to continue to raise your question. More than 500 questions were raised on the platform.
You're going to see this hour is going to be very full because we're going to cover many different topics to structure our exchanges. We have grouped these questions as major topics. We have some questions that are logically in line on COVID-19 and what Total has done. We're going to talk about macroeconomics, the energy transition, on which there were many questions. We will talk about the climate ambition for Total. This is going to make it a very busy 60 minutes. Right now, we're going to dive into the heart of this. The Prime Minister was talking about phase II of the lifting of the lockdown, but things are still very uncertain. If this crisis wasn't this controlled, what are the perspectives for 2020 and 2021 if the pandemics continue? This is a question for Michel [Oliver].
Well, we're not going to handle all 500 questions in one hour, especially since I'm chatty, so we're going to try to be precise. The characteristic of the incredible period that we're living is uncertainty, is the lack of visibility. For the first time, we have frozen the global economy, and the question is, what pace are we going to be able to get out of this? We can see that the lockdown was efficient from a healthcare perspective, but now we need to restart the machine, and we need to see when the demand for oil product is going to pick up. I believe that people are going to aspire to move again, but it's not just for a country, it's just the entire European continent, and I believe it's going to take much longer for the rest of the economy, especially in terms of the demand for kerosene.
In my opening statement, I said we have tried to evaluate the impact for the group. I've given several elements, including an impact of EUR 12 billion, but I cannot guarantee that the price of the barrel is going to remain stable. Every time I have this question of the stability of the price of the barrel, it's two concepts that don't go together because it's very erratic. We do what we can to face this. again, at the same time, we shouldn't overreact, and that's the policy that we have. The fundamentals of the group are good. We can resist. I believe the fact that we are confronted with this volatility in the markets means that we were used to this. Generally, energy tends to grow. now we have to face this volatility in demand.
I hope that not just for Total, but for all of the global economy that we'll manage to get out of this. It's hard to give a lot of perspective. I think we need to all accept a steering that is holding by the fundamentals and quarter after quarter, and that's what I said when I presented our investors and our shareholders at the end of Q1. Let's meet up again at the end of Q3. We know that Q2 is going to be the worst. It is the peak of the crisis for us. I can tell you the financials are not good for Q2, but I hope that Q3 will see an exit to the crisis. For me, the meeting from more perspective is going to be more September or October. Right now, we need to steer by sight. You're talking about 2021.
I'm not in the world of tomorrow. I'm in the world of right now and taking things one after the other.
Well, this is a great transition for the world of tomorrow, which is a word that appeared with COVID. This COVID crisis gives us all the opportunity to think about the world of tomorrow. What is your vision, and what is Total's space in it?
I saw that visibly, when people are on lockdown, they become philosophers. I saw that there was a lot being said on the world of after. When we're looking at the elements that we're facing, we are in the world of today, and I believe that the first priority for us is to not believe that this pandemic is going to go away until the doctors give us and researchers give us medicine or vaccines.
These barrier gestures and these masks are going to be our companions for a long time. We need to find our space within the company. We shouldn't remote work forever. It is not individuals lost in space. It is a collective life. That is the strength of the company. This is why we need to go back to this method of functioning. I believe that we're going to have to live with this for several months, even if the scientists are super busy. One of the lessons from this deep freeze of global economy is diversification. I believe that globalization will come back. I hear a lot of people talk about relocation, but for Total, this is very clear in our strategy, is to have supply chains that are diversified. No hyper-dependence on one pole or one region of the world in order to better resist.
The other lesson that I need to draw from this is that we need to keep in mind the fundamentals of the company with a low debt level, a resilient portfolio, because we can face extraordinary situations. The space for Total in the world of tomorrow will be Total. A Total that is moving. It is maybe a world that because we lived this extraordinary episode, the commitment of humankind to the fight against climate change is going to be stronger, and I think it strengthens our conviction that it's the right strategy in our economic model. A lot of people say that renewables are not profitable, but when you sign 15-year contracts with guaranteed prices, it's not a bad thing to have in your portfolio, and it increases the solidness and the resilience of Total's economic situation.
Well, you have people who are philosophers in lockdown, but people who are pragmatic. There was one question asking whether Total had enough treasury to face this. Well, this is for my Chief Financial Officer who has been concerned about the cash flow of the company for the past two months.
At the end of March, we had a little bit more than EUR 9 billion of net cash flow. This is the cash flow that we can have. It's cash flow minus the debt that we need to pay over the 12 months. As Patrick said, since the April, we've been working on this. We have emitted EUR 7 billion in debt with a long-term maturity of 18 months with very attractive conditions. It demonstrates that even during this crisis, the group keeps an excellent credit. We have negotiated more than EUR 6 billion in bank loans.
We also have the possibility of having other bank credits for EUR 11 billion. We have a liquidity of EUR 30 billion, which is comfortable to face the crisis that we're facing.
Thank you, Jean-Pierre. I feel that in times of crisis, it is the strongest people who are doing best. The fact that we were able to access these conditions for bonds and credit shows that the fundamentals of the group are good.
Well, we've spoken about the health crisis, but there's been an oil crisis because of a disagreement between oil-producing country, and there's a question from [Jacques Urlu] talking about the failure of companies involved in U.S. shale gas. Don't you feel that the oil will go up in two months with a very high price because of the lack of investments, and are we going to see a tension because of the various countries?
Well, there are two very different questions. There are two schools here. There's the optimistic school, which is from [Mr. Jacques Urlu], which is the idea that currently the investments being reduced and the investments in oil being more controlled over the past four or five years following the crisis and the discipline of the majors was quite general, except for the shale oil producers who invested quite a lot. There is the idea that because we're not investing enough, we won't have the new productions and because we'll come back to a normal level. Once again, it's the pace of this return to normalcy. It is possible that we wake up in about two years and we're lacking oil on the planet because demand would be back.
Conversely, there are other theories saying that the stocks are so high, like they rose in 1985, that it's going to take a while for them to go back down, and that's what I was saying. The dynamic is not something that is stable. In my opening speech, I was saying that the U.S. producers were able to close their wells when they saw negative oil prices. In the same way, now that they're seeing $35 or $40, they might reopen these wells and they might now go back to reason. We might live an oil market under tension if the offer comes back too fast.
Producing countries are very disciplined right now to implement the OPEC quotas, including countries that were not used to doing so, like Nigeria and others.
aren't they going to be tempted to lose their discipline when the prices go up because they weren't disciplined beforehand?
This is human psychology. It's hard to anticipate. I hope that the scenario described by your colleague is possible. When I ask our strategists, they come to present it to me. I say that right now, I'm more in the sort of wait and see. I'm a little bit like St. Thomas Aquinas. I'd like to see where the economy is headed. Once again, if we say that looking forward 15 - 18 months, we know that the group can weather the storm like they did in 2015-2016 .
A crisis that could impact the producing countries and all of the players of the oil companies and the equipment companies. You've reduced your investments, but will you be helping the French service providers like Technip?
Well, more than in 2015- 2016, it becomes a concern because the companies that are working for the oil companies are living through major crisis, five years apart. The reduction of investments carried out by Total was not on major projects. We have stopped a lot of drilling operations, that's clear, but our major projects are ongoing. For the French companies that continue to work on these large projects, they're going to continue to work on them. We have several large projects that we're going to launch, like the project in Uganda, and they'll contribute to this. It's the best way in which I can answer this question.
French companies from the oil sector being very competent, they are Total's traditional partners, and we're not going to do more than entrust them with projects if they are competitive, and I hope that they will be, and I hope we'll be able to launch this over the next few months. Yes, there'll be a short-term project reduction, but we're not talking about zero. We're going to continue to invest EUR 14 billion, so that's not a negligible amount. I'd like to remind you that in 2015- 2016, Total had found the way to support a company like CGG by buying seismic data in advance to give them a little bit of cash flow. That's what we can try to do. Of course, Total's teams are in contact, direct contact, with all of these oil service companies. It's clear we're going to need them to continue with our projects.
Well, this is all for COVID-19. We're going to now move to energy transition. This is a strong part of Total's roadmap, and there's one question that summarizes many of them. How is the business model from Total going to evolve, and how is this going to impact profitability, cash generation, and the share value for Total? three questions, knowing that peak oil was met, how will Total continue its energy diversification to go from fossil fuels to new energy occur without any negative impact on the price of shares and on dividends? Question from [Yannick Ricci], what is going to be the strategy of Total to adjust to the pressure of groups that are not in favor of fossil fuels while creating value for the company? another question saying that ecological players are influencing powers and the media.
How do you see the consumption of oil for the next 20 years?
Well, indeed, a lot of questions as I can see. The demand for energy is going to change. It's not going to evolve in a vacuum, and that is the difficulty for us. In debate that we have with environmental players, the issue of climate is there. Again, the demand for energy is not going to change overnight. Today, and I'd like to repeat this once again, they don't like it, but 80% of it is from fossil fuel, from oil and gas and coal. We know it's going to change. It's very clear. The most striking example of this is the automotive industry, which is switching from thermal engines to electric engines, and it's a transition that's going to happen.
The question is that of the pace in our plans and our scenarios, we're amongst the most aggressive because we're planning for 40% of 2 billion vehicles in 2040 could be electrical. That's really big because not all continents are electrified in the same way. Within this, we can see that somewhere between now and 2040, there'll be a peak demand around maybe 2030, according to the scenario. Beyond that, the demand for oil in 2040, it'll be slightly lower than what it is today. Fundamentally, and it's important for the group, we'll still need oil in 2040 in any of these simulations, maybe 80,000-8 5,000 bpd . This industry is going to be confronted with supply. It's going to be a lack of demand, so there'll be a price pressure. My deduction is that the strategy of the group is important.
We need to position ourselves on cheap oil. All of the choices that we're making, and when we carry out oil exploration, we might find ourselves in a cheap oil economy, and we need to keep this in mind. I'm told, hence the fact that you need to prepare the future, because what we want is to continue to develop the group, and hence the fact that the choice we're going to make should have the forecast of an economy that is becoming more and more electrical with digital and many uses that use electricity, so maybe more AC in developing countries. We need to be prepared for this. We need to invest. Again, the question is the pace. Can it have a negative impact on the price of shares?
Well, I'm going to say the reality of the financial markets, it's the oil company that have a low multiple. Maybe if you're in a renewable sector, your cash flow is not very strong, but you've got a multiple of 15-20, and companies like ours is multiples of five and seven. It's quite frustrating for us. What are we trying to do? Through the development of these new energies in the group and with this renewable and electricity, we want to attract these strong multiples on Total's share.
Our shareholders need to understand that we're in a dynamic where we're going to serve dividends, but the more we grow in a group that has the ways to do it and long-term perspective with sustainable investment policy, what we're trying to do is to make sure that this new Total has an increased value for the markets, not just as a fossil fuel company, even if fossil fuels are still going to be necessary, but a company that is also part of this new energy. Maybe there'll be less cash coming from renewables in the beginning, but there might be a revaluation of the company through the price of its share. This is what we're trying to do concretely. Once again, we also know that in energy, you need to be patient. I've said it before. I've spoken about patience in my opening statements.
These investments are 15- 20-year investments. When we're building like what we're doing, a significant portfolio of renewable projects, one of the interests of having such projects is that for the 15- 20 first years, it's the governments that guarantee the revenue. Not very high, but it's good to have stable revenue. When you've acquired the space to build your solar farm or your wind farm, it's going to last much longer. You've built something that is going to give you money for over a long period. You need this perspective. One of the interests for a group like ours is that we can have this perseverance, this duration, and this middle to long-term vision. That's what you need to keep in mind. I tell the shareholders, don't worry.
Yes, we have our oil revenues that today guarantee the return to the shareholder, but they allow us also to invest in these new energies. The idea is to carry out this transition at the right pace to make sure that the revenue derived from these other energies feed in. Look at the evolution of the cash flows of the group. We've carried out this transition between oil and renewables. There'll be gas because this is still very much under debate. It is going to be the energy of transition. We need energy that is available, so we need an electrical system that works all the time. That's what our customers want. The renewables are intermittent, and it's really expensive to store energy. Gas is the right way to go. We can see that our strong evolution to gas for several years, especially LNG.
We're the second player in the world. When you look at the revenues of the group, you've seen an increase of 80% of the cash flow coming from LNG. Through these actions, we have the transition with oil, gas, and electricity, and everybody takes over from the other one to deliver the cash flow that we need for the future. I'm sorry, I waxed a little bit lengthy, but this is the evolution we're trying to set up, and we'll get there.
A virtuous circle, if you will, a transition that would increase the valuation of Total when we listen to you, Patrick Pouyanné, but some shareholders are concerned and mention the example of these religious congregation that say that they're going to exclude the investment of their pension funds.
do you fear that this type of decision will become more general and that the Total share will be blacklisted by a number of investors because of its image?
Well, you need to look at reality in the face. This exists. You need to listen to them. I prefer people who invest positively in our group. I feel that the climate ambition that the board has selected for itself and for the group is along this. We can't say we're right and society is wrong. We live within society. This climate issue is a strong one, and our response is to share our vision, the ambition that we have with our investors. It's not just an aspiration for the long term, but we also want to do concrete things.
I think that the best answer I can give to these shareholders, if they want to listen to us, is look at what we're doing. We're investing. I believe that several shareholders are raising this question, so I think that somewhere I see these reactions with regard to the climate ambition saying, "Well, it's not enough." Some say, "Well, they're not going to get there." Well, let us just do it. I'm optimistic. I'm always looking at the glass half full. Once again, the best demonstration of our seriousness in this is everything that I've described, everything we've been doing since the beginning of 2020. Once again, we've had more press releases on renewable than fossil fuels. We've apparently released too many of them, but it shows that the group is moving. One, let's listen to civil society.
number two, and that's, I think, the hardest part in civil society, is that they have to accept that there won't be a big woo-ha. Because if Total is getting rid of the fossil fuel and I ask the board if I can sell my portfolio, somebody's going to buy it and the climate will not be the winner, because what is Total in the oil market? It's 1.5% of the oil market, and who produces oil? Do you think the large oil-producing countries are going to stop producing oil because Total stops it? I believe that it's a strong mistake to tell the Western companies who have the technological means, who have the means to carry out this transition, to tell them to pull out of oil and just saying we're responsible actors and we're going to entrust it to actors who don't have the same conscience.
Climate change is not something that is going to happen overnight and by saying, "Oh, we just need to leave and change the offer." Climate change will happen if we can move the cursor of the demand for energy, so we need to work with our clients. To work with our clients, we've just announced a concrete example. We've announced that starting in 2023, we want to start selling fuel oil for electricity for power generation. It is something that we do in a certain number of continents. This decision from Total only makes sense if we support our clients who are, for example, mining companies in Africa, to get from fuel oil to another energy, which is going to be a mix with solar and gas, for instance. This is where our challenge is.
It's not saying, "Well, I'm going to solve my Scope 3 indicator and just kick the can down the road because I won't have done anything for the planet and the climate." It's complex.
Where you're saying that there are more questions on renewables than on fossils, there's been a lot of questions on different types of energies. We've decided to select one question by types of energy, starting with LNG, which might not be the activity that is the most commented, but [Yamina] said you've invested in LNG. What is your vision on the profitability of this?
Well, we know that the price of gas is low. LNG is a cash flow machine because once we have the plants, it's making cash and it works. We're very committed. We're going to continue to develop the strategy. We have several significant projects that have started.
Our projects kick-started last year, Arctic II, Mozambique LNG, Nigeria LNG, the extension. All of these projects kick-started, but because of the crisis, all of the other projects are stopping for one or two years. That means that the supply that we're going to bring to the market in 2024- 2026, will have less competition than what we feared last year. I think that we will be there, and honestly, these projects in which we invest are well-positioned because we compared them with others in terms of their production cost, since it's the criteria that we look at. Yamal LNG is a great success. Arctic LNG 2 will definitely be a success in the Russian Arctic. Mozambique LNG has all the characteristics to be a long-term project that will also have solid profitability criteria like other brownfield projects.
LNG is an industry that has strong growth rates, + 10% this year, even in spite of lockdown. I was looking at the Chinese statistics rising very quickly. There's a real demand for this energy, which is gas, which is transitional energy, and this gives us a profitability that is strong.
Moving on to wind energy. What is your plan, the five-year plan for offshore wind energy?
Well, this is something that is quite new to us. You can't do everything within a group for a very long time. We were quite skeptical. We had a wake-up call two years ago. There are two things. There are floating wind energy. We have great skills within the group. We have engineers that are able to create floating platforms everywhere, but we have exploration engineers who have taken on floating wind energy.
We have one program in Asia and another one in Wales, but this is probably for 2025, 2030. In the meantime, for wind anchored or fixed offshore, onshore, offshore fixed wind energy, we're lagging behind. We're still working on a big project, which we'll probably announce very soon in the North Sea. It's the first project. The profitability is slightly lower than other projects because they're more costly. However, the main benefit for the group is that they're large projects. We're talking about one, two gigawatts, so it will increase and accelerate our growth. Offshore wind energy is something that we're still tiptoeing on. A lot of energy and oil companies are looking into them. It's more capitalistic, and this is why the competition is broader. Beyond that, I can't tell you that we have a very precise and detailed plan. We clearly have
A 25 GW capacity by 2025, but for different energies, it will depend on the country. We had solar project in India, Spain. Solar energy is less capitalistic, and at the same time, it's easier for our competitors to do solar than offshore wind energy. We're open to different technologies.
Another question, what are the objectives in terms of solar farms?
Well, we have a balanced portfolio. When we bought out Direct Energie, there was Total Quadran in France, where we had more wind energy than solar, which is not something that is very known by people. In Spain, clearly, as a new field, if I may say, because we signed at the beginning of the year a portfolio for two gigawatts to continue work also on other projects, and we just bought a residential portfolio in Spain for solar energy makes a lot of sense.
We have a big country and great capacity. We don't have clear figures. What we want is to produce energy in the best profitability situation as possible in each country.
Another question about the acquisition of 2.5 million clients in Spain, this new portfolio, with Direct Energie and Total. What are the growth ambition, and are you considering starting to work in other countries than France, and what are your new projects in Europe?
For Europe. Well, before trying to sell energy everywhere in the world, we want to work within our territories. Of course, in Europe, competition was organized, so you don't need to own all the networks. You can easily have access to the networks and access to third parties are easy. The price is the same for all competition.
In Europe, you can have a system where you're on the one-hand side, a producer of energy and electricity, and on the other side, distributor, without having to manage network. We have Belgium and France. We just started penetrating the Spanish market. It goes really quickly, actually, especially with this new portfolio in Spain. Western Europe is quite busy. There are already a lot of stakeholders there, a lot of actors. We're probably looking into Eastern Europe. These are big projects, but before that, we need to make sure that we can buy in the right conditions. This is exactly what we did with Spain. You need to be able to develop these businesses and these activities. We need to be very efficient when it comes to marketing as well.
In her speech, Patricia Barbizet talked about India and how important India was.
We actually have a question on India for bioenergy projects in India. Do you have any bioenergy in India?
In India, we do solar, we do gas. Yes, we do something small with the Yann Arthus-Bertrand's foundation, GoodPlanet. He solicited us. We were already talking about carbon neutrality at the time for a project when he contacted a lot of CAC 40 company CEOs about it. It was a biomethane rural area project to help rural populations in India. He wanted us to help, and it would compensate the emissions of all the flights of our employees. We had this little activity steered by Yann Arthus-Bertrand's foundation. Otherwise, we don't have any bioenergy project in India. We were actually talking about yesterday, biomethane and biogas could be an activity, especially for rural and agricultural fields. We're talking about it in France, but also in emerging countries.
This is something that we'd like to look into. We're first going to focus on solar and gas there with Adani. With this partnership with Adani, we just invested EUR 1.5 billion in order to build this partnership, and the solar project that we have is very profitable, higher than 10%. It's a great partner. They're very sturdy for solar energy. For gas, however, it's more risky because they're very coal-oriented in India, so developing gas is a gamble, but at the same time, I think that it's very symbolic what we've just done, and I think it shows our climate ambition as a group. By investing in these two energies that participate in this transition, it's a gamble, but clearly working towards this transition.
There are a lot of questions with regards to mobility. We'll get to that.
There's a live question that I just got for Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette. You just described your new missions as Senior Director, but according to you, what are the strengths of the Total group?
Well, I would say that Total has an incredible culture of excellence and safety and security, and the fact that all its employees love the group. The group and the history of the group is dear to people's heart, and we have very good governance, not only at board level, but across the board within the company. This is something that is extremely striking for me within Total.
Now, moving on to mobility. We had a lot of questions on mobility, as I said. We had many questions, actually. With regards to one type of energy, hydrogen. I can see you nodding, [Thierry Speller, Jacques Birkin, Christophe Dufau], pretty much all had the same question.
What is the group's strategy when it comes to hydrogen, especially when it comes to cars?
Well, actually, there was something brand new today because in my speech, in my introduction, I talked about hydrogen, which was a first. It's true that the world is changing. Hydrogen and this attraction for hydrogen in Europe is something that is very present. In Asia, you have Japan that's looking into it. In France and in Europe, we're talking about hydrogen a lot. Hydrogen is something that we're working on. We are creating a team which will work on hydrogen. We used to work hydrogen in our refineries with Bernard Pinatel, but this hydrogen was produced by a third party, Air Liquide, etc. Why are we interested in hydrogen? For two reasons. First, because we can see that hydrogen can help us decarbonize natural gas.
It's fossil fuel, but we can easily, or not so much easily, but we can mix in gas networks with 10%-20%, with also biomethane, which was also a word that I used during my speech. You can make gas greener. I tried to create a team that will help us make gas greener. We need to create and produce decarbonized hydrogen. There are different ways from gas by storing carbon, et cetera. If this hydrogen is decarbonized and we include it in other gases, then we will reduce gas emissions of our energy. The second reason, and you talked about mobility, is transportation, clearly. Because there's one area where we believe hydrogen will be necessary, is heavy load trucks. Batteries work well for small vehicles. For transportation for heavyweight trucks, we think that gas and hydrogen will be necessary.
this is why we're trying to work on this option. We are actually working with the Hydrogen European Alliance. The word hydrogen will be more present within the Total group.
again, about new energies, at what pace will they be developed within Total?
Difficult to say, but concretely, we do have a project to produce green hydrogen on the La Mède site, which we are developing in order to be, industrially speaking, operational.
Very quickly, we had questions with regards to recharging docks for electric vehicles. Well, what is your ambition when it comes to charging stations?
I know that people want us to put charging stations in all of our gas stations. We started doing this in 30 gas stations, and we only had three clients per day, so the return on investment isn't great for our shareholders. It won't make them happy.
I know that we wanted to finance a big charging infrastructure. It's urgent, especially if Europe starts fostering the purchase of electric cars and we don't have the charging stations, it won't work. We need infrastructures in every gas station, but we can't do that overnight. We have strong strategy. We'll start with urban areas because we do believe that electric cars will develop more in urban areas because it's an urban vehicle. People want to be able to drive 50 km back and forth, but if you want to have long journeys, people will be more cautious, and if they're working or living in a rural area, people won't buy these type of electric cars. We have a plan to equip 200 urban areas. Total wants to be a major stakeholder in the business of charging stations.
It will be a complement to our network, but also it's in line with the electric strategy of the group, and to offer a service to our customers. Finally, batteries. I said what I meant. We are working with ACC, or rather, we're working with PSA, the PSA Group, with Saft in 2016. The electric car market is much faster than what we expected. Saft was not bought for these batteries, but now we have the skills, so European states have decided to help us massively. We're talking about over EUR 1 billion in subsidies. In these conditions, and with the partnership with PSA and maybe Renault, so two big car manufacturers, it means that these plans, hopefully they'll buy the batteries that we'll be manufacturing together. I think this is a gamble that should be launched at industrial level by the group.
It won't be easy, but it's in line with our ambition to be a stakeholder in this electric mobility, and this is perfectly relevant to have bought Saft. Of course, storage of electricity and batteries is necessary if we want to make our economy more electric.
Moving on to your climate ambition now. You recently communicated on your ambition in terms of climate, a lot of activists and NGOs were following up on what you were saying. This question is actually in English, I'll read it in English. Will new climate ambition lead to a fundamental shift in investment away from fossil fuel renewables of at least 50% annually by 2030?
By at least 50% per year in the next decade, so by 2030. I'll answer in French. I think it'll be easier.
Mr. van Baal, you should read the document that we have just published, and in this document, we talk about our climate ambition. We said that we wanted to make our ambitions in low carbon emission from 20% in the next decade. I think we'll get to 20% very quickly, but we won't have a fundamental shift. No, because the energy mix of the whole planet won't change drastically. Total has clients. We have customers. Over the years, of course, we will increase our investments, as I said, and if we want, and we will, because we've announced it, decrease our carbon intensity by 15% by 2030. This means that we'll have to invest more than 15% per year. We're starting from zero, so clearly by 2030, we'll probably be at 20%, 25% maximum.
When talking about transition, it's also about what we're doing in gas and oil. My answer is the following, and this is exactly the debate that we're having with different NGOs, organizations. They're all saying we're not fast enough, but our belief is that, yes, we need to have clear willpower, but we also have customers, and we need to offer them a service. This is this balance that we're trying to strike. Let me be clear. Our commitment, my commitment, is that the ambitions that we've put on the table, we will fulfill them. The demonstration that I would like to make to Mr. van Baal, and he's probably from the Netherlands, I believe. What I want to say is that since 2015, we've reduced our carbon intensity by 6%. We're the only stakeholder to have done that.
I'll have a lot of colleagues who said that they would do it, but I think the next in line has managed to reduce it by 1%-2%. We are trying to implement this transition at the pace that is relevant for us.
Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3. If I understood your speech, Scope 1 is Total and Total infrastructures and your infrastructures, and Scope 3 is the product that you're using within the group.
We have a question. The Total group is present in more than 130 countries, and 60% of its greenhouse gases are outside of Europe. This is not about to change because the development of your activity will mainly be outside of Europe. However, the new ambition in terms of carbon neutrality only covers Scope 3 in Europe. Why are you not covering all Scope 3 emissions of the group?
Like Jeanne Martin from ShareAction, I would like for her to read and listen to my speech again. We can play on words as much as we can, but the document that we have describes a global ambition. Our ambition is the following. It's on Scope 3, and it's a global ambition. We won't be able to do it by ourselves. Total won't change the energy demand in the world overnight. It's not possible. It would have to be done hand-in-hand with our customers, but also with states, with governments. They need to help us. We won't be able to undertake this transition for the market by ourselves. Like I said, it's a global transition. We want to do it with societies. We went one step further with Europe, and we've made commitments. Europe has stated, and it has been reiterated yesterday, that this policy will be implemented.
Because we are a European stakeholder, 60% of our emissions in Europe right now. It's not 60% outside of Europe, it's 60% within Europe. 60% in Europe because it's historically where we had our European networks that are strong. We're selling gas products with fuel oil. We have a lot of customers here in Europe, so these clients. Why Europe? Why are we only committing to Europe and for the rest of the world, we're talking about ambitions? If our customers, they're using fuel to heat their homes. If in their countries, they're not putting into place incentives, they won't change overnight. You need policies and incentives. You need subsidies, financial support, and of course, I'm taking this example. We are proactive. We're talking to our customers and telling them, we can help you, support you financially to move on to electric gas pumps, et cetera.
We have this policy. You need to support and to guide customers, but you also need incentives. It's not only about Europe. We have a global mission. Let's not reduce what was said to one thing. In Europe, we actually went further than our ambitions because we used the word commitment, which is not insignificant. We are not giving up on Europe. Of course not. We're present in Europe. We have our foundations here, and we want to leverage what's going on in Europe in order to develop new businesses, such as charging stations and everything that we'll be doing in Europe as the foundation for the development of our growth. Will help us implement these activities elsewhere in the world. This is how you should see and perceive our commitment. Again, it's a collective and global ambition, as I said in my speech.
If other regions of the world decide to implement this type of incentives of carbon price and this type of policies, then Total will commit in the same way.
The same shareholder has another question with regards to climate ambition, but it's about the compensation of the CEO. It's saying that the compensation is indexed on the increase of reserves as Carbon Tracker and its report shows it's problematic because it increases and intensifies the increase of production of hydrocarbons.
Well, Jeanne Martin, these quantified criteria are safety and security with regards to the drop of greenhouse gases. I don't see the criteria that you're talking about with regards to the increase of production of this type of energy. There's a qualitative one with hydrocarbons upstream, downstream, and objectives. On the slide, it's not written increase, but actually fulfilling objectives. I don't want to change everything right away.
The board had noted it. Patricia explained to you that my colleagues had decided to have one item on low carbon businesses and another one on the downstream part. This was explained to you, and I think that Total is a company that produces hydrocarbons, and in this matter, we have an ambition. Each year we need to renew our reserves. That's true. However, as I said earlier, we're looking for quality of reserves. We want to be able to produce at a low cost in order to meet this demand, which could drop in the future. Therefore, Total has a strong ambition to remain producer of hydrocarbons. I'll take note of this. I don't know if this is something that we should no longer use as a criteria, but I think we've given out quantitative criteria in this regard.
A long time ago, we had another colleague in the northern part of Europe on this type of criteria, so we don't have any quantitative criteria which would incentivize me to produce more. However, when it comes to cash flow, clearly it's a strong criteria. Would you like to take the floor?
Yes. I just wanted to add that compensation criterias are often in line with the strategy as expressed by the CEO. This movement towards low carbon energies. These criterias are more and more moving towards these aspects in order to reflect this ambition. It's not easy to change one's image in the eyes of investors. There is some project that may divide people, especially when it comes to social responsibility.
There's a question with regards to the Uganda project at the border of the Murchison Uganda Wildlife Authority managed park.
What measures are you going to implement in order to respect environmental measures that are protected by UWA and WWF?
Well, this is a project. We're not producing anything. It's an important project. I mentioned it during my speech because we really want to kick it off. We're aware of the biodiversity stakes in this project. We have an African culture at Total, so we're very much aware of this. We know that part of this development, the Murchison Falls Park is involved. We're actually talking about 0.04% of the park actually. There were studies that were carried out, and for this project, I'm committing to the fact that we'll have a net gain in terms of biodiversity at the end of the project. Biodiversity is an essential aspect. Net gain, what do I mean by that?
When investing in this type of project, Total project, but any industrial project on site for any activity, we will have an impact on the environment. We carried out all the studies necessary in order to assess the current situation. Of course, we will try as much as possible to avoid any impact and then minimize the impact and then reduce and compensate offset. This is our ERC biodiversity. Avoid, reduce, minimize, offset. Of course, first is about avoiding the impact. There will be an impact. We've carried out the studies. They were shared by many stakeholders. These studies took about four years to be carried out. I had the opportunity to discuss with people who drew my attention on this specific topic, so know that this is something that is handled. I will invite people to come on site to look at what we're doing.
Like I said, at the end of the project, and very much in line with the populations, because we're involving the populations, my commitment is the following, there will be a gain in biodiversity at the end of the project. Total will implement actions so that if we have, on the one hand, a negative impact, we will have a positive impact on the other hand. The objective is to, of course, minimize the impact in order to, as much as possible. This is very concrete and practical. We don't want to displace populations. We don't want to have too much human activity in areas where you have wildlife, mainly. This is very rigorous work that we are carrying out with great and skilled teams.
We are aware of this, and we are making commitments for this part, which is a beautiful area of Africa.
We have 10 minutes left. We'll be talking about shareholding policy, and there's a question for Patricia Barbizet.
It is a shareholder that is thanking you for the quality of your mandate. Maybe she met you because she's saying that you've met the shareholders, and what do you take away from these meetings?
Thank you for your question. I feel that it's very important to take part in these meetings with the shareholders, because we can hear them directly voice their concerns, and we can directly also tell them how the board is perceiving the policies, and makes their decisions, and supports the management, and is a key interlocutor on all of these topics. On strategy, the implementation of strategy, the policies vis-à-vis the employees and the shareholder policy, the capital increase destined for the employees.
This allows us to confirm to the investors what the board is doing, how the board selects its members, the skills from everybody, the diversity of the experience, and of the skills to be able to express this beyond what can be said in the annual report and in the shareholders meeting. It really helps us to make our decisions to help the Chairman and CEO on all of the issues that we tackle within the board, which are very numerous and very varied.
Thank you, Patricia Barbizet. We want to wrap up this session. We wanted to talk about the shareholder policy of the group, which is a key part of the trust between Total and its shareholders. I'm going to give you three questions, Patrick Pouyanné, and I believe that you can answer all three of them.
We've got [Denis Astier], who is raising a question of the shareholders saying that Total has a sustainable, ambitious growth of 5 %- 6% growth of the dividend, and how is it imPACTEd by the decrease of the price of oil? There was also a question on preferential share that we spoke about, and vis-à-vis the share buyback policy, what was the average price, and how does this contribute to a return to the shareholders?
Well, several questions. First of all, in September, in an environment above $50, we had not imagined that we could be at $30 six months later, proving that we need to be cautious. Given the growth of the cash flows and of our production, we had announced that we would have a policy of growing the dividend by 5% - 6%.
Well, it's clear that with the new environment, we've had to walk away from this policy. We've maintained our dividend, but it was a little bit weird when everybody asked us to decrease it, to actually increase it. What I've said, it was the more cautious approach of the board to maintain it, but to stabilize it, and I said this policy is currently suspended. We'll see what the new normal is once we're out of this crisis, and we'll come back to you afterwards, but consider that it's suspended and we're talking about stability for the coming year in accordance to the way that the global economy will recover. I know that a lot of the shareholders like the scrip dividends. There is a dilution effect when we do this. The institutionals don't like it because why do I say dilution? What is happening?
If I give you one share for EUR 1, I create more shares. This means that somewhere I increase the number of dividends that I pay. if I keep my dividend stable, I'm going to need to pay more tomorrow than today. This means that this is going to hinder my capacity to increase my dividend per share. this year, we did something that we might do again, which is a mix to make everybody happy. We said that for the rest of the dividend to have a scrip dividend. for the quarter, you can have a scrip dividend, at EUR 28.80.
It would be a good deal if the price continues to increase, because we're trying to preserve the cash, but we're not going to do it for every payment, because otherwise we're going to create a lot of shares and it's going to be an additional burden for the company. I believe that what we did for the outstanding earnings per share, it was a good way to pay the shareholders without diluting too much. For the share buyback, I don't know what was the average price for the first quarter, EUR 41. We're not very far. We're going to come back to there. Why do we say that there's a return to the shareholder? Well, when we buy shares back, we decrease the absolute burden of the dividends because there are less shares that trigger a dividend, so I'm going to decrease my burden.
That means that I increase my potential for growth of the dividend. I'm preparing the growth of future dividends in doing that. This is why in our capital allocation, in general, shareholders prefer dividends, whether it's large or small. It's true for all. We've retained this message, and this is why, logically, the board said, "Let's stop buying shares again. Let's concentrate our efforts on maintaining the dividend." I hope that I was able to answer in these three questions explaining our policy.
There's a question, when is our policy threatened by the price of the crude?
Once again, a commodity business like ours needs to be able to go up through peaks and trough. We have not decreased our dividend in 30 years. Shell had done so for 75 years, and finally they decided to. We didn't decide to.
We need policies that are reasonable in their growth. We need to keep this long-term vision. Why? We know that we're going to go through the volatility of the hydrocarbon prices. It's not stable. The situation today is exceptional because once again, I think that we're living this shock of supply and of demand with such high stocks. What I'm saying, and because the board trusts in our fundamentals, we need to look further. We need visibility. We should not negatively overreact. Total can finance its investment programs that the company needs to maintain the strategy and maintain the dividend above $35-$40 /bbl . If the oil was sustainably at $25 /bbl , we'd need to revisit that. We're not there, so once again, I don't have a negative message. We saw the reaction.
There are a lot of players, and it's one of the lessons of what we've seen after a little bit of lack of reason in March. Many players have, in our best interest, to have oil above $40 than under $25, and they've reacted. This makes me optimistic. As a shareholder raised the question, when we have less money, we invest less, and when we invest less, we don't replace the barrels that disappear year after year. Once again, we will see if the consequences are more dramatic and worse than what we anticipate. Once again, as I said in my opening speech, it will not be a surprise. All of this will be done after getting the input from our shareholders.
Thank you, Patrick Pouyanné for this answer. That closes the Q&A session, and I yield the floor back for the rest of our meeting.
Well, thank you so much for emceeing these questions. Some will recognize themselves because we've maybe answered 30 questions. We were efficient out of the 500. I believe that that's what we were able to do during our usual shareholders meetings. I'd like to thank all of those of you who've raised these questions. Don't hesitate if you want to raise these questions with our team. They are available to answer you and explain to you how the group is working. I'd like to now move to the last part, which is the result of the vote of the motions. I'm going to show you the motions. The text of the motions are on page 49- 68 of the brochure that is available on the website. It will be announced by its number and summarized.
I would like to say that the people who had the shares for two years have a double vote. I've already said all of this. I'd like to remind you that the shareholders emitting a vote with quorum of a quarter of the emissions that entail a vote. This will meet a quorum for the meeting. The meeting is statuting at the majority for resolutions 1- 13. The general assembly is two-thirds of the votes expressed for the extraordinary meeting, which is 14 - 21 and Resolution A. I'd like to clarify that since the law of simplification and clarification of corporate law, the calculation of majority for the vote of the motion is based only on the votes recorded. Abstentions are no longer votes expressed.
They're not taken into account if the shareholder doesn't vote and abstains or votes nil. this year there's less suspense because it was stopped last night according to the regulations for these specific meetings with no public present. first motion, to approve the financials of the company. You can see that the first motion was approved at 99.74%. Motion two, for the social and consolidated account, were also approved 99.74%. Thank you for that. Third motion, which is an important one, which determines the dividend of EUR 2.68 for 2019 with an option of paying a scrip dividend for 98.09%. Fourth and fifth motions, authorize the board to operate on the shares of the company and the second to approve the reports of the auditors with no new convention. Both are yes. The first one, 97.61%, and the second one, 99.96%.
Motions number six and seven, the renewal of the mandate of my two favorite directors, Patricia and Marie-Christine, for a duration of three years. Both are a yes. 93.63% for Patricia and 98.95% for Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette. Motion eight is the renewal of the mandate of Mr. Mark Cutifani. It's a yay for 99.02%. The nomination of our new board member, Mr. Jérôme Contamine, is a yay at 99.65%. It's almost dictatorship level. Welcome to Mr. Jérôme Contamine, who is going to contribute his skills. He was part of the group some 25 years ago, and then he was part of several large groups. He's also on the board of many financial boards. Welcome, Jérôme Contamine within the board. Motion 10 and motion 11 were presented by Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette. They concern the information pertaining to the compensation of the CEO.
These are new following the French PACTE Law. Both are a yes at 97.81% for the 10th motion and 99.09% for the 11th motion. Motions 12 and 13 concern the compensation of the CEO that Patricia Barbizet presented to you. We had to approve the fixed variable exceptional elements and then approving the policy of the compensation. Both are approved. The first one at 91.78%, the second one at 93.14%. I'd like to thank you for this. Motion 14 is also important because it transforms Total into a European company, and I'm delighted to see that it was a yes at 98.38%. Because it is completely coherent with our commitment as a committed European citizen, it is a great thing to become a European company. I believe that it's important.
I believe that a lot of large companies in the continent show their support for European construction like this. The next motions are more financial. The 15th is a delegation of power of attorney to the board to increase the equity, either by issuing ordinary shares. The second one is the same with the removal of the preferential right of subscription. Both are a yes with 94.03%, 93.64%. Motions 17 and 18, the 17th is delegating the competencies to the board for ordinary shares, and the second one is to increase the number of securities in case of the increase of capital. Both are yes at 90.76% and 90.18%. Motions 19 and 20. 19 concerns the delegation of powers to increase the capital with the suppression of the preferential right of subscription for the shareholders. The second one is for the increase of capital for the employees.
Both are yes, with high rates of 96.40% and 99.21%. The shareholders are in line with the policy of increasing shareholdership amongst employees. Motion 21 authorizes the board to agree to a subscription or purchase of shares of the company, is a yes at 95.50%. Resolution A, which was suggested by a group of shareholder that went above the threshold of 0.5%, the board decided to put it to a vote even if it raised issues legally. There is a large majority against, 83.20% of votes against. This modification of the bylaws is not adopted. I believe that we are now able to wrap up our shareholders meeting, the motions having been voted and the agenda having been completed. I want to thank you for this very exceptional meeting. I hope that the pandemic will be gone by May or June of next year.
I wish you all, as citizens, that it is the case, and that we'll be free to once again all meet together. I'm delighted to know that there were more than 1,000 of you connected during this session. Once again, thank you for listening to this streamed live. The next dates are on the website, and it is set for the 28th of May 2021. See you very soon. Thank you.