Gasoline shortage: the strike renewed in several refineries

PETROL SHORTAGE CARD. While the Senate adopted the text of the pension reform, Saturday, March 11 in the evening, the strikes continue in certain refineries. Is a shortage to be feared?

[Mise à jour le 12 mars à 15h33] The refinery strike, which began on March 7, could continue for several days and, with it, shortages of fuel. Friday March 10, the movement was renewed until Thursday March 16 at 9 p.m. at the Donges refinery, in Loire-Atlantique. Fabien Privé Saint-Lanne, CGT delegate for the refinery, spoke to journalists to warn that the Donges site, located in western France, would still be shut down. “The government remains silent in the face of the expression of this powerful social movement. This lack of response constitutes a serious democratic problem”, he assured.

At the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Fos-sur-Mer, fuel shipments partially resumed on Friday, March 10, before the blockages were put back in place. The CGT denounced a “manipulation” of the management, which had communicated on the partial resumption of deliveries. “We are going back on strike with zero shipments, we are going to close the gates and no more trucks, nothing more,” assured the union, according to comments reported by BFM TV. Friday, March 10, the strikes were renewed on all the refining sites of TotalEnergies, indicates franceinfo. This concerns La Mède, located in the Bouches-du-Rhône, but also Feyzin, in the Rhône. Shipments have resumed from the Esso-ExxoMobil site in Port-Jérôme, Normandy.

The consequences of these blockages are felt differently across France. However, the western regions of the country are more affected. So, Saturday, March 11, Le Figaro identifies a fifth of distribution locations with a total or partial shortage of fuel. Among the most affected departments is the Mayenne where 20% of service stations are in difficulty, but also Indre (18.4% of stations concerned). Other departments are experiencing tensions, such as Indre-et-Loire (17.6% of stations in difficulty), Sarthe (17.3%), and Orne (15.8%).

Can a large-scale shortage occur?

For Thierry Cotillard, president of the Les Mousquetaires group (Intermarché), the situation will not get worse. The boss of the distribution brand wanted to be reassuring about BFM-TV this Thursday, March 9: “there will be no problem with diesel. But since there are refineries that are starting to no longer ship, we are at risk. But the good news is that in these cases- there, there are emergency state stocks that we have not drawn on. So if the refineries did not deliver to us, we would have the solution of state stocks and we would last a few days.”

guest of RTL, Wednesday March 8, Francis Pousse, national president of service stations at the Mobilians union, had already reassured about the stocks of fuel available. “The availability of products on the national territory is there, since we have, roughly, one month of commercial stocks and three months of strategic stocks”, he detailed. He also recalled that many distributors had filled their stock in anticipation of the movement.

The Minister Delegate for Transport said that the government would involve the police in the event of “real blockages” of refineries. “We cannot imagine that our refineries, permanently, do not work, so we have all the legal tools to intervene, if necessary” added Clément Beaune.

We have set up a search engine to find the list of fuels available in the stations of a department and/or a city. Only the places where the station managers have indicated the gasoline available and its price are displayed. The information is classified by date and time of update (“MAD”), to maximize your chances of finding fuel:

This search engine is based on the “instant flow” of fuel prices in France, provided by the Ministry of the Economy, is available on the official website: https://www.fuel-prices.gouv.fr/. It is up to the point of sale concerned to declare its fuels and prices, as well as the dates and times of updates to the ministry.

The Ministry of the Economy also provides a map and a search engine. To facilitate your search, first fill in your region, your department or directly your municipality to display the stations near you.

This search engine and this map are made from the “instant flow” of fuel prices in France, provided by the Ministry of the Economy and available on the official website: https://www.fuel-prices.gouv.fr/. This operation generates some limits, the first being that of the absence of recent updates in many stations. Some prices or availability have not been entered for several days. Here is the manual anyway:

• By zooming in and then clicking on a point on the map, you can display all the information about the station and scroll through the prices of each fuel with arrows.
• Out-of-stock fuels are either explicitly mentioned on the map, or absent from the stations
• It is up to the point of sale concerned to declare its station and its prices to the Ministry. Some groups, such as Total, also provide data that is sometimes more detailed.

Another possibility is to use the map developed by the MonEssence.fr app, which is usually used to identify fuel prices near you based on feedback from users who themselves fill in the prices observed at the pump. In times of shortage, the app puts a map of the shortage online, always based on user feedback. It is not always fully up to date or regularly updated, but it provides an overall map of the situation in France.