Total SA, the French oil behemoth, on Friday revealed in a statement that the year 2012 has started a lot more favorably for them as compared to the last year. It further restated that its output supervision is lot more intact now, marking a mega-magnificent spike up of 12.8% in terms of its net income during the fourth quarter.

The perk up in its performance is being attributed to the tremendously increasing strength of skyscraping oil prices, and it has hardly faced a bruise by the fragile and ultra sensitive downstream prevailing in the markets as well as weal stable output.

The group has now verified that it is focused on pulling up an increase of over 2.5% in general output on a yearly basis starting from the year 2012 to 2015. But still, a number of investors have claimed that the plan of the group has always lacked detail on the manner in which it must achieve its objectives.

In Europe, Total shares were finding a bit of bother as they were down by around 1.2% to €40.65 whereas the benchmark index CAC-40 was seen slipping down 0.75%.

While expressing his opinion in this regard, along with mentioning what all consequences can be derived from the market situation for both consumers as well as producers in the time to follow, Christophe de Margerie, the Chairman and Chief Executive of Total, said that, “In a period of economic slowdown, ongoing tensions on the global oil supply supported the Brent price above $110 per barrel in 2011. This environment has been favorable for the upstream, but it was difficult for the downstream activities, notably in Europe”.

The hydrocarbon output of the group was, however, stable during the course of the last quarter of the last year which roped in from the stability witnessed a year before that. The equation then read 2.384mn barrels of oil correspondent on a daily basis (mboe/d) when compared to a figure of 2.387 (mboe/d) recorded a year before.