Total sees more pressure on oil price

PARIS (Reuters) - French oil major Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) sees continued pressure on oil prices and will increasingly look for oil in less accessible areas to boost production, its head of exploration told the Le Figaro newspaper.

"The upward pressure will be maintained because there is too limited production capacity worldwide to deal with the increase in consumption, notably in emerging countries," Yves-Louis Darricarrere said in an interview to be published on Tuesday.

He said Total would seek oil in very deep fields or look for gas in rocks with new technologies. Total also prepares to be active in the Arctic.

"When you add up the rise in annual consumption of 2 percent and the reduction in production of some oil fields, you need -- to cope with this double phenomenon -- to bring on stream every two years" fields the size of Saudi Arabia, he said.

He said that Total's 2007 production data, to be published in early February, would show an increase from the previous year.

"Our portfolio of projects for the period 2006-2010 is one of the biggest in the industry. New fields will start production such as the Jura (and) North Sea, with more than 170 million barrels in proven and probable reserves. After that, until 2010, it will be very big fields," he said.

(Reporting by Marcel Michelson, editing by Richard Chang)