Total to divest retail business in Haiti

Total has signed an agreement with Bandari Corporation to sell its retail business in Haiti.

The retail business features a network of 92 service stations and general trade fuel sales operations.

Total’s marketing and services business senior vice-president for the Americas Isabelle Gaildraud said: “This transaction with local operators is aligned with our strategy of streamlining our asset portfolio in the Caribbean.

“We are fully confident that Bandari Corporation will develop these quality assets effectively. We remain present in Haiti through a lubricants distribution agreement.”

Bandari Corporation is a consortium formed by several local and regional firms.

Total develops petroleum-based products and has 31,000 employees in 110 countries.

Last month, Total signed a deal with Google to jointly develop artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for subsurface data analysis.

Under the agreement, the companies will develop AI programmes to interpret subsurface images, mostly from seismic studies using computer vision technology. The firms will also automate the analysis of technical documents using natural language processing technology.

These programmes are expected to enable Total’s geologists, geophysicists, reservoir and geo-information engineers to explore and effectively assess fields faster.

Total began applying AI to characterise oil and gas fields with machine learning algorithms in the 1990s. In 2013, the firm used these to implement predictive maintenance for turbines, pumps and compressors at its industrial facilities.

Total is currently exploring machine learning and deep learning applications such as production profile forecasting, automated analysis of satellite images and analysis of rock sample images.