Oil price surge to boost Total profits

Soaring oil prices will help France's Total (TOTF.PA) produce bumper annual profits on Friday, when investors hope for details on how much Europe's third-largest oil group will invest to revive output.

Total is expected to post a 22.7 percent rise in fourth-quarter adjusted net profit to 2.55 billion euros ($3.49 billion), according to a Reuters poll of 12 analysts.

That would put Total's bottom line for 2010 at around 10.3 billion euros, up 32 percent from 7.8 billion in 2009 when the economic crisis slashed oil prices to below $40 a barrel.

Total is due to report earnings at 0700 GMT.

With oil now at $100 a barrel, analysts will want to hear what Total plans to do to increase its oil and gas output, which rose only 0.5 percent in 2010.

Chief Executive Christophe de Margerie is also likely to be quizzed over the political situation in northern Africa and the Middle East, where there are concerns among oil traders that unrest could spread to major producing countries and affect production.

Total's annual profits are still some way off their record of 14 billion euros, which caused a political outcry and calls for a windfall tax which Total successfully resisted in 2008.

Strikes in French refineries over pension reform and the closure of a plant in Dunkirk are set to put a cap on earnings.

In 2010, Total, France's biggest company with a market value of $140 billion, invested billions to build on its presence in two of the world's most promising energy sources -- Canada's oil sands, the world's largest crude oil reserve outside the Middle East, and Australia's offshore gas.

The French group spent $1 billion to buy a 27.5 percent stake in Australia's Gladstone LNG. In Canada, it acquired oil sands development group UTS for $1.5 billion and agreed to spend $1.7 billion for new stakes in two oil sands projects.