TotalEnergies expects lower Q3 results amid outages, shrinking refining margins

French oil major TotalEnergies, opens new tab expects its third-quarter downstream results to sharply decrease due to a 65% drop in refining margins in Europe and elsewhere, the company said on Tuesday amid a drop in global oil prices.

TotalEnergies' shares were around 4% lower at 59.94 euros by 0940 GMT, moving broadly in line with peers.

The company's European Refining Margin Marker stood at $15.4/t in the third quarter of the year, down from $44.9/t the previous quarter.

A drop in refining margins in recent months, a result of slowing global economic activity and new refineries coming online, is set to weigh on third-quarter earnings of the world's top energy companies.

BP, Shell and Exxon Mobil this month issued similar warnings, as oil prices fell 17% in the third quarter — the largest quarterly decline in a year — on worries about the global oil demand outlook.

Several analysts nonetheless flagged Total's refining margin drop in particular as weaker than expected, with Oddo BHF analyst Ahmed Ben Salem calling the price drop a "collapse" and RBC analyst Biraj Borkhataria cutting his third-quarter net income estimate for the company by 480 million euros.

Total's overall quarterly hydrocarbon production is expected to be at 2.4 million barrels of oil-equivalent per day (Mboe/d), at the lower end of guidance given in second-quarter results.

The company cited security-related disruptions in Libya, where a dispute between rival governments caused oilfield shutdowns, and an August outage at the Australian Ichthys LNG plant, in which Total holds a 30% stake, which left the site running at half-capacity into October.

The company will release third-quarter results on Oct. 31.

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