TotalEnergies has committed more than €100 million to a three-year artificial intelligence programme with Mistral aimed at transforming oil and gas exploration and reservoir engineering, a development with potential relevance to the energy group’s sizeable upstream portfolio in Oman.The programme, announced on September 15, will develop a new generation of frontier AI models designed to help TotalEnergies’ geoscientists explore, characterise and develop hydrocarbon reservoirs. The companies plan to combine advanced artificial intelligence, including agentic AI, with the group’s extensive subsurface datasets and decades of technical expertise.
TotalEnergies said the partnership would draw on close to 10 petaflops of computing capacity and nearly a century of accumulated knowledge in geosciences and reservoir engineering. The models are intended to integrate, process and interpret large volumes of complex information, generate alternative development scenarios for exploration prospects and support optimisation of producing assets.
The initiative is relevant to Oman because TotalEnergies maintains interests across several upstream blocks and LNG activities in the Sultanate. The company has not, however, identified any Omani field or project as an initial deployment site for the new AI models, making any direct application to its local assets unconfirmed at this stage.
TotalEnergies produces oil from Block 6 through a 4 per cent interest and holds a 26.55 per cent interest in onshore Block 10, where gas production supports its integrated LNG strategy. It also has a 22.5 per cent interest in Block 11 and operates exploration Block 12 with an 80 per cent stake.
The group reported production of about 65,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in Oman in 2024. It also participates in the Oman LNG and Qalhat LNG complex, whose combined liquefaction capacity is 11.4 million tonnes a year, and is developing the Marsa LNG project at Sohar with OQ.
Marsa LNG, in which TotalEnergies holds 80 per cent and OQ 20 per cent, is designed to supply LNG as a marine fuel and strengthen the company’s integrated gas position in Oman. Its development gives the group another technically complex asset where subsurface modelling, production planning and reservoir performance are central to project economics, although no link to the Mistral programme has been announced.
Under the new partnership, TotalEnergies and Mistral will establish a joint scientific laboratory bringing together the energy company’s subsurface specialists and the AI developer’s scientific and technological teams. TotalEnergies said the objective was to create proprietary models tailored to its operational requirements while retaining control over strategic data and intellectual property.
Patrick Pouyanné, chairman and chief executive of TotalEnergies, said exploration and reservoir engineering were among the areas where artificial intelligence could create the greatest value for the company. He said combining geoscience data, specialist expertise and Mistral’s capabilities should help experts analyse complex information and improve decision-making.
Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s co-founder and chief executive, said the programme demonstrated the ability of the company’s models to support demanding industrial and scientific processes while allowing large enterprises to use customisable AI systems that protect intellectual property.
The €100 million-plus commitment broadens an AI collaboration between the two companies that began in 2025. Their earlier work established a joint innovation laboratory focused on applications spanning industrial performance, lower-carbon energy, emissions reduction and assistance for researchers.
TotalEnergies has also pursued digital subsurface technology through other partnerships. A 10-year collaboration with SLB, announced in 2024, focused initially on next-generation software for reservoir engineering and geoscience modelling, including faster reservoir simulation and the use of AI to automate technical workflows.
The company has steadily expanded its internal digital capability. Its Digital Factory employs around 300 developers, data scientists and other specialists and has produced more than 100 digital solutions, including about 60 using technologies from machine learning to generative AI, providing an existing platform for deploying new tools across operations globally.
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