TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and is one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and production to power generation, transportation, refining, petroleum product marketing, and international crude oil and product trading. TotalEnergies is also a large-scale chemicals manufacturer. TotalEnergies has its head office in the Tour Total in La Défense district in Courbevoie, west of Paris. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, it was ranked as the 29th-largest public company in the world, and additionally ranked as the 25th largest company of any type on the Fortune Global 500. History 1924–1985: Compagnie française des pétroles The company was founded after World War I, when petrol was seen as vital in case of a new war with Germany. The then French President Raymond Poincaré rejected the idea of forming a partnership with Royal Dutch Shell in favour of creating an entirely French oil company. At Poincaré's behest, Col. Ernest Mercier with the support of 90 banks and companies founded Total in 1924, as the Compagnie française des pétroles (CFP) (in English, the French Petroleum Company). As per the agreement reached during the San Remo conference of 1920, the French state received the 25% share held by Deutsche Bank in the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) as part of the compensation for war damages caused by Germany during World War I. The French government's stake in TPC was transferred to CFP, and the Red Line agreement in 1928 rearranged the shareholding of CFP in TPC (later renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1929) to 23.75%. The company from the start was regarded as a private sector company in view of its listing on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1929. During the 1930, the company was engaged in exploration and production, primarily from the Middle East. Its first refinery began operating in Normandy in 1933. After World War II, CFP engaged in oil exploration in Venezuela, Canada, and Africa while pursuing energy sources within France. Exploration in Algeria, then a French colony, began in 1946, with Algeria becoming a leading source of oil in the 1950s. In 1954, CFP introduced its downstream product – Total brand of gasoline in the continent of Africa and Europe. Total