French Total intends to make final investment decision on 10 oil and gas production projects in the next 18 months in various countries that include Nigeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, and Argentina, reported Daily Trust.

This comes as Total raised its dividend by 1.6%. According to Bloomberg, Total’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanne, added: “We are going to propose to increase the dividend as we have confidence in the future.”

Pouyanne added: “My goal is to launch new projects to prepare the future, while remaining disciplined and cutting costs further because crude prices might drift lower.”

Total further announced that it plans to boost oil and gas production by 5% a year from 2014 to 2020. The company had demonstrated its resilience by generating adjusted net income of $8.3b and had the highest profitability among the oil majors despite the difficult environment.

Under the new investment strategy, Total’s Egina in Nigeria, which is the largest offshore project currently ongoing, will boost its production capacity to 200,000b/d of oil and it should reinforce Nigeria’s deep-water production potential by the end of 2017.

Total is also producing from Nigeria from the OML 58, 99, 100 and 102 blocks as part of a joint venture with NNPC, among other assets.