(Bloomberg) -- French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said it’s important for TotalEnergies SE to keep its primary listing in France, stressing the benefits to the country of having a domestic oil major. 

France couldn’t have convinced TotalEnergies to keep prices at the fuel pump capped at a maximum of €2 ($2.14) per liter had it not been a French company, according to Le Maire.

“So it’s important to keep Total’s headquarters in France and it’s important that its primary listing stays in France,” Le Maire said in an interview on BFM TV. “I’ll fight for this because it’s in the best interest of the French people.”

TotalEnergies’ Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne first said he was considering moving the company’s primary listing to New York in an interview with Bloomberg Opinion in April. The Paris-based company is considering the switch “in part because ESG policies in Europe have more weight,” he told a French senate hearing on climate-change goals on Monday. 

Total shares were 3% lower at 9:32 a.m. in Paris.

Le Maire said that TotalEnergies told him it had a problem getting financing and that was a factor pushing it to look at a New York listing. A third of European mutual funds exclude fossil fuels, whereas a negligible number of their US peers take that view, Deutsche Bank AG analysts wrote in a March note, citing Morningstar Direct data.

Read More: Total Talks Up New York Listing With Sector Abuzz About Switches

“My answer is, we’re going to set up a capital markets union so that you can raise much larger sums on a European scale, particularly for your activities in the energy transition,” Le Maire said. “You can raise the money you need, so there’s no longer any reason for you to go to New York.”

(Adds share price in fifth paragraph.)

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