Total chief not looking for acquisitions Oil supply: if production slows, there could be trouble Total, the French oil group, is to concentrate on "aggressive" management of its existing assets to invest and grow and is not seeking new acquisitions, according to its chief executive. Christophe de Margerie said the company was investing more heavily in exploration than it had in the past, particularly in "frontier exploration blocks" such as the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and Angola. "That's where we intend to have most of our new investment today," he told reporters in Paris. No more acquisition. We have plenty of reserves to be developed. We are full of resources for the long term. The potential that we have in hand to develop the company and make it grow in a profitable way - that's done. The company, which reported a 20 per cent increase in third-quarter profits last month to €3.3bn, is planning to sell up to $20bn in assets over the next three years to boost profitability and is aiming to hit a production target of 3m barrels of oil and gas a day in 2017. The priority was to have a "strong dividend policy ... then continue to grow and invest," Mr de Margerie said. Among the assets Total is offloading are Total Infrastructures Gaz France, or TIGF, its French natural gas pipeline network and gas storage business, and a 20 per cent stake in an offshore Nigerian field sold last month in a $2.5bn deal to China Petroleum "We have taken the decision to be more aggressive not only in investment but in the way we manage our portfolio of assets," Mr de Margerie said. We need to be more aggressive in the way we buy and sell. There was too much of a tendency in Total to say: we are "long" on the oil price, so we will keep everything." He said the global oil and gas outlook was undergoing a "total change," with prices supporting the exploitation of new discoveries and non-conventional resources - banishing the concept of "peak oil," which foresees the world's store of exploitable resources going into decline. Mr de Margerie instead described what he called "peak capacity," saying Total had recently adjusted its forecast to 98m b/d from 95m b/d for global output that would endure for a "long plateau." Today, what we say is there is a peak quantity, which is not linked to resources but to the capacity to develop those resources. He said that the development of so-called "tight" oil reserves in the US had the potential to add 1m-3m b/d to US production, but he added that that did not mean that the US would become a net exporter of oil, as some have predicted.