French firm TotalEnergies has confirmed the sale of its downstream oil retail network to Filoil Corp. of businessman Raffy Villavicencio, but it indicated that it will continue its fuel trading activities as well as planned foray into renewable energy (RE) investments.

“TotalEnergies completed the sale of its shares in its fuels marketing joint ventures in the Philippines—Total Philippines Corp., Filoil Logistics Corp. and La Defense Holdings Corp.—to its existing local partner Filoil, one of the leading independent oil players in the Philippines,” the French company noted in a press statement.

TotalEnergies specified that “following the acquisition, the three companies are fully owned by the Filoil group, which will retain rights to continue operations under Total brands for up to three years.”

It was qualified, though, that the continuation of these Total businesses will already be under the command of the Filipino buyer within the agreed timeframe, since these were already unloaded by the French owners.

TotalEnergies has been one of the major players in the downstream oil segment, following the industry’s deregulation in 1998.

The French firm added that its other business activities—including trading, renewables, and global services “will continue to operate in the Philippines and remain unaffected by the transaction.”

It was in 2022 when TotalEnergies announced its partnership with ENEOS of Japan for RE investments in Asia, although actual Philippines projects have yet to be concretized from that partnership.

To date, Total indicated that it is operating a solar power plant in Tarlac and has also been marketing solar solutions in the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment.

The other business of Total in the Philippines is its shared services or business process outsourcing (BPO) unit, which has been pooling support services for its global operations —primarily those in accounting, purchasing, information systems, training, human resources administration, and facilities management.

TotalEnergies also had its previous stake in an upstream oil and gas exploration venture over 10 years ago, but that was also offloaded following “non-viable” commercial outcome of its petroleum exploration activity.