MUSCAT, SEPT 17
TotalEnergies has launched a three-year artificial intelligence programme involving an investment of more than €100 million to develop advanced models for oil and gas exploration and reservoir engineering, with potential relevance to the energy major’s upstream operations in Oman.
The French energy company and Mistral announced the programme on September 15, saying it would develop a new generation of frontier AI models to support TotalEnergies’ geoscience experts in the exploration, characterisation and development of oil and gas reservoirs.
The programme will combine TotalEnergies’ subsurface data and nearly a century of geoscience and reservoir-engineering expertise with Mistral’s artificial intelligence capabilities, including agentic AI.
The companies will establish a joint scientific laboratory bringing together TotalEnergies’ subsurface specialists and Mistral’s scientific and technological expertise.
According to TotalEnergies, the models will be designed to integrate, process and interpret large volumes of subsurface data, generate multiple development scenarios for exploration opportunities and help optimise and extend the life of existing projects.
The partnership will draw on nearly 10 petaflops of computing capacity alongside TotalEnergies’ accumulated geoscience and reservoir-engineering expertise.
“Exploration and reservoir engineering are among the areas where artificial intelligence can create the greatest value for our activities,” Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, said.
For Oman, the programme is relevant because TotalEnergies has a substantial producing presence in the Sultanate, although the company has not announced whether its Omani assets will be among those covered by the new AI initiative.
TotalEnergies produces oil from Block 6, where it holds a 4 per cent interest, and natural gas from Block 10, where it has a 26.55 per cent interest through Marsa LNG LLC. It also participates in Oman LNG and Qalhat LNG.
Its most significant new development in the Sultanate is Marsa LNG at Sohar, an integrated project combining gas production from Block 10 with a one-million-tonne-per-year LNG plant and renewable power infrastructure.
Marsa LNG is 80 per cent owned by TotalEnergies and 20 per cent by OQ Exploration and Production. The project was more than 55 per cent complete at the end of June 2026 and remains targeted for start-up in the first quarter of 2028.
The development includes a dedicated 300 MWp solar photovoltaic plant designed to meet the LNG facility’s annual electricity requirements. The LNG plant is primarily intended to serve the marine-fuel market in the Gulf.
The latest investment comes as TotalEnergies expands the use of artificial intelligence across its operations. The company has said AI can help improve seismic interpretation, reservoir development and production planning while allowing technical teams to assess a wider range of development scenarios.
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