The boss of TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he was ready on Wednesday to “make a discount” on supply contracts electricity concluded in 2022 at a high price with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)estimating that 6,000 customers were affected.
“We have a certain number of SMEs which are affected by prices that are too high, contracts signed between July and December, and we are going to offer them the possibility of renegotiating a contract” with a price of around 280 euros per megawatt hour, said said Pouyanné in an interview with BFM Business broadcast on Wednesday evening.
“We are going to offer TotalEnergies customers to have a price equivalent to VSEs”, he indicated: the tariff for the group’s SME customers will thus be aligned with that guaranteed to VSEs which had been announced at the beginning of January at the resulting from negotiations between the government and electricity suppliers.
“A fix”
Faced with the explosion of energy bills for many craftsmen and small companies, the executive had urged energy suppliers to renegotiate contracts with price increases deemed “prohibitive”.
Patrick Pouyanné assured that there had been “a real debate last year when electricity prices rose very, very high from July (…). Some electricity suppliers have decided not to award contracts anymore because they find that the prices are too high. There was a debate with the government which told us ”No, no, you must continue to sign contracts”. »
“We signed contracts which objectively, I see, are too high,” he noted. The extension to SMEs of the capped tariff guaranteed to VSEs is “an effort on our part”, added the CEO of TotalEnergies. But “I think that we have to make a correction and that we agree to make a discount in relation to these contracts, including for SMEs, because in any case the controversy will continue”, he said. he adds.
