TotalEnergies works with over 100,000 suppliers across about 120 countries. In 2023 its purchases, excluding petroleum products and vessel chartering by Trading & Shipping, came to approximately 30 billion dollars. In 2025 the Company invested 17.1 billion dollars, of which 21 percent went to low-carbon energy.
Read that second number properly: it separates this account from a conventional oil major. TotalEnergies runs a declared two-pillar strategy, hydrocarbons and Integrated Power, and ended 2025 with 39.7 GW of gross installed electricity generation capacity including 24.1 GW of renewables, more than 13,000 service stations and nearly 78,000 charge points. Buyers inside this company behave like utility and retail buyers, not only like oilfield buyers. If you sell grid, trading, energy retail, EV charging or customer-facing software, a real budget owner exists here. Pitch at the wrong pillar and none does.
How the buying process actually runs
Tenders arrive by invitation, on the SAP Business Network. TotalEnergies runs requests for information, calls for tenders and e-auctions through e-sourcing: suppliers receive an email from TotalEnergies e-Sourcing inviting them to sign into the SAP Business Network portal. The tender comes to you, once somebody inside has decided you belong on the list. There is no self-service route from registration to revenue, and where e-auctions are used you finish by competing on price against the others invited.
Qualification happens in Sequana, against five named criteria. Sequana is TotalEnergies' supplier qualification database, and qualification runs against the five criteria in its Procurement Standard: Technical, Health and Safety, Compliance, Sustainability and Finance. Sustainability is a scored gate in its own right, not a questionnaire stapled to a security review, and suppliers must comply with the Fundamental Principles of Purchasing, based on the Code of Conduct.
The contract has a French shape. TotalEnergies publishes General Terms in parallel versions under French and English law, with separate sets for goods, services, both combined and chemical products, all revised with effect from 1 May 2026. Those General Terms are only the second part of a purchase contract. The first part is the Particular Terms, negotiated with the specific TotalEnergies entity buying from you. So your agreement may be governed by French law, changing how your counsel reads indemnities, liability caps and termination, and your counterparty is an entity, not the Company: a contract signed in Paris does not automatically cover a subsidiary in Angola, Brazil or Texas. TotalEnergies also publishes a supplier mediator contact, an escalation route when a relationship stalls.
Who owns what, so you know where your deal belongs
You will not be selling to these people. Their remits tell you which pillar your deal sits inside. One governance fact is worth more than any name: the Executive Committee authorises investments itself, subject to Board approval above 3 percent of shareholders' equity and notification above 1 percent. Below those thresholds the decision never leaves the building.
| Name | Role | What it means for a vendor |
|---|---|---|
| Stéphane Michel | President, Gas, Renewables & Power | The Integrated Power pillar: generation, storage, trading and power sales, the newest large buying centre |
| Namita Shah | President, OneTech and President, Asia | The technical and scientific branch, and why build-versus-buy has an advocate on the Executive Committee |
| Nicolas Terraz | President, Exploration & Production | Upstream operations, where the Health and Safety criterion bites hardest |
| Emmanuelle Guégan | President, Marketing & Services | Service stations, charge points, lubricants and the most consumer-facing demand |
| Jean-Pierre Sbraire | Chief Financial Officer | Where a multi-year commitment has to make sense against a disciplined investment story |
Patrick Pouyanné is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, a combined role since the Board reunified the positions on 16 December 2015, and chairs the Board's Strategy & CSR Committee. Aurélien Hamelle is President for Strategy & Sustainability, covering strategy and markets, sustainability and climate, government affairs, HSE, internal control and audit, and legal. Vincent Stoquart is President, Downstream and President, Refining & Chemicals. Catherine Remy is President People & Social Engagement. Names from TotalEnergies' governance pages, composition as of 1 September 2026, verified 12 September 2026. Senior roles change; check at source.
Why you cannot sell into this account from the bottom
TotalEnergies has invested one billion dollars in research and development, innovation and digitization every year since 2021. OneTech, its technical and scientific branch, has over 3,400 engineers, technicians and researchers at 11 sites and 15 R&D centres across Europe. The Digital Factory, opened in 2020 in central Paris, has around 300 developers, data scientists, AI scientists and designers, and has produced more than 100 digital solutions rolling out in over 25 countries, 60 percent of them incorporating artificial intelligence, for nearly 10,000 AI models in production.
So "we could build that" is not a bluff, and the build option has a seat at the top table, because OneTech is led by an Executive Committee member. The answer is not a better subject line but enough coverage to hear the objection and answer it, the practical case for multithreading rather than betting on one champion.
The layer that matters sits below the published names
The people who can sponsor a purchase are branch technology leads, category and lead buyers inside procurement, and country chairs, who carry real authority in about 120 countries. TotalEnergies publishes the existence of its Performance Management Committee, made up of the heads of its main business units with senior vice presidents at Company and segment level, meeting monthly. It does not publish the membership. That is the layer you need, and a moving target: the Executive Committee changed three times across 2025 and 2026, with a new President People & Social Engagement from August 2025, a President Asia appointment effective May 2026 and a new President of Marketing & Services from September 2026. The layer below moves faster. Any map you build by hand decays, and silence from cold outreach cannot tell you whether you had the wrong target. A warm referral is how you find out.
The board is a published second-degree map
TotalEnergies has 14 directors, 9 of them independent, an independence rate of 82 percent excluding employee representatives, and 50 percent women as of 29 May 2026. The Board held 9 meetings in 2025, average attendance 99.2 percent. Outside positions as published by the Company, verified 12 September 2026:
- Jacques Aschenbroich, Lead Independent Director and chair of the Governance and Ethics Committee. Formerly Chairman and CEO of Valeo, and Chairman of the Board of Orange until 2026.
- Marie-Christine Coisne-Roquette, Permanent Representative of Colam Entreprendre SAS and Chairwoman of the Steering Committee of Sonepar SAS.
- Lise Croteau, chair of the Audit Committee, director of Boralex, Québecor, Québecor Média and Vidéotron. Formerly CFO of Hydro-Québec.
- Marie-Ange Debon, Chairwoman and CEO of the La Poste group since 22 October 2025. Formerly head of Keolis.
- Glenn Hubbard, Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia University and Chairman of the Board of MetLife.
- Slawomir Krupa, CEO and board member of Société Générale, joined this board in May 2026.
- Laurent Mignon, Chairman of the Executive Board of Wendel and Chairman of the Board of Bureau Veritas. Formerly head of Groupe BPCE.
- Helen Lee Bouygues, Operating Partner at Ardian since 2024 and board member of Burelle SA. Formerly Lead Independent Director of Neoen until March 2025.
- Anelise Lara, formerly CEO for Refining, Natural Gas and Power at Petrobras.
- Dierk Paskert, chair of the Compensation Committee. Formerly CEO of the independent power producer Encavis AG.
Three of the 14 seats belong to employees, which has no equivalent at an Anglo-American major. Angel Pobo and Romain Garcia-Ivaldi represent employees, appointed by the European Works Council and the Central Social and Economic Works Council respectively, and Valérie Della Puppa-Tibi represents employee shareholders. Garcia-Ivaldi is an asset manager of offshore wind projects at TotalEnergies Renewables, and Della Puppa-Tibi became a Lead Buyer when Total Global Procurement was created in 2017. Working procurement and renewables people sit on this board: procurement is not an obstacle bolted onto the end of your process.
If anyone in your network is senior at any of those organisations, there is a documented two-hop path into this boardroom. Almost nobody runs that query. Running it is what a relationship intelligence platform does.
The other routes in
The school, not the alumni association. TotalEnergies publishes no alumni network. Every executive biography publishes a school. Stéphane Michel is a graduate of École Polytechnique and Mines Paris and a Chief Engineer of the Corps des Mines. Nicolas Terraz is Polytechnique and Ponts, Catherine Remy Polytechnique, Jean-Pierre Sbraire ENSTA ParisTech and IFP School, the same pairing as the employee director Romain Garcia-Ivaldi. Aurélien Hamelle and the director Slawomir Krupa are both Sciences Po. These grandes écoles networks are searchable.
TotalEnergies On. The Company runs a startup accelerator at Station F in Paris, aimed at the electricity value chain: renewable generation, storage, trading, sales and electric mobility. If you sell into Integrated Power, that is a front door with an adoption mandate attached, less crowded than the supplier portal.
Partners already inside. TotalEnergies has published collaborations with Mistral AI on artificial intelligence, with Emerson's Aspen Technology on industrial data collection across its sites, with Airbus and Safran on sustainable aviation fuel, and with the CNRS on its AUSEA emissions detection technology. Each has people inside the account who can route you to a contract holder, and often wants to, because it makes their engagement stickier.
Then you have to get to your own connector
Suppose the strongest path runs through one of your own board members who sits on another board with a TotalEnergies director. You have to get them to prioritise it and spend a piece of a relationship built over years. Ask twice in a quarter and you will not be asked a third time.
Three rules for the introduction itself
Ask for the pillar, not for the Company. "An introduction to whoever owns dispatch and trading systems in Gas, Renewables & Power" is actionable. "An introduction to TotalEnergies" is not, in a company operating in about 120 countries across two pillars with a separate technical branch.
Write the blurb your connector will forward. Give them one paragraph they can send without editing. The forwardable blurb is the whole craft.
A warm path starts the clock, it does not skip it. You still qualify in Sequana, still negotiate Particular Terms with the specific entity under French or English law, and still wait to be invited into e-sourcing. What it buys you is a real conversation with a contract holder who has a problem and a budget, quarters earlier than cold outreach.
See the warm paths into TotalEnergies
Everything above describes the problem: an integrated power business that created buyers an oil major never had. What it does not tell you is which of your own relationships already reaches inside. That is a question about your network, not theirs, and it is the one most teams answer from memory.
Boomerang maps the warm paths your company already has into accounts like TotalEnergies, across your team, your customers, your board and investors, and your partners. It then drafts the ask, routes it through the right connector and tracks it to a booked meeting. Book a 15-minute walkthrough and see it run against your own target accounts.
Frequently asked questions
How do you become a supplier to TotalEnergies?
Qualification runs through Sequana, TotalEnergies' supplier qualification database, against the five criteria defined by its Procurement Standard: Technical, Health and Safety, Compliance, Sustainability and Finance. Tendering then runs on the SAP Business Network, where suppliers receive an email from TotalEnergies e-Sourcing inviting them into a request for information, a call for tenders or an e-auction. You are invited into tenders rather than applying for them, so qualification makes you eligible and does not create demand.
Who makes technology buying decisions at TotalEnergies?
Purchases originate inside a business, not centrally. The Executive Committee authorises investments itself, subject to Board approval above 3 percent of shareholders' equity and notification of the Board above 1 percent. OneTech, led by Executive Committee member Namita Shah, concentrates technical and scientific capability, while the budget and the problem usually sit with a branch or country contract holder in Exploration & Production, Gas, Renewables & Power, Refining & Chemicals or Marketing & Services.
How is selling to TotalEnergies different from selling to a pure oil and gas major?
The Integrated Power pillar. TotalEnergies ended 2025 with 39.7 GW of gross installed electricity generation capacity including 24.1 GW of renewables, plus more than 13,000 service stations and nearly 78,000 charge points. That creates internal buyers for grid, storage, trading, energy retail and EV charging technology that a pure upstream and downstream major does not have, and it means the same product can need a completely different sponsor depending on which pillar it serves.
Which legal entity actually signs the contract?
Usually not TotalEnergies SE. TotalEnergies publishes General Terms under both French law and English law, and states that those General Terms are only the second part of a purchase contract. The first part is the Particular Terms, negotiated between the supplier and the specific TotalEnergies entity. Establish which entity and which governing law apply before you assume an existing agreement covers a new opportunity in another country.
Can you cold email a TotalEnergies executive?
You can, and the usual outcome is silence rather than rejection. These are serious operators whose calendars are built by people whose job is to protect them, and a company buying at this scale attracts every vendor in every category. The additional problem here is arithmetic: with over 3,400 people in OneTech and a Digital Factory of around 300, your business case is being weighed against an internal build in a room you are not in. What changes the odds is a sender the recipient already trusts.
