On Monday, the government said it would not hesitate if necessary. Well, it’s done. This Tuesday morning, the Ministry of Energy Transition announced the requisition of “three employees per shift” at the Fos-sur-Mer oil depot “in the face of worsening supply tensions in the Bouches-du-Rhône”, consequence of the strikes against the pension reform.
“The requisition is valid for forty-eight hours as needed, from March 21” and concerns “personnel essential to the operation of the depot” which supplies the PACA region and the east of the Occitanie region with fuel, a the ministry said in a statement. The depot also ships fuel by pipeline to the Lyon region.
Tensions in the western stations
“Today the stations remain generally well supplied at the national level, but tensions are crystallizing in PACA”, explained Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
Half of the Bouches-du-Rhône service stations lacked a type of fuel, and 37% were dry on Monday, according to public data analyzed by AFP. The situation was also particularly disturbed in the neighboring departments of Gard (40.9%), Vaucluse (33.33%), Var (23.24%) and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence (22.22%). ). At the national level, around 8% of service stations in France were out of petrol or diesel.
The prefectures of Vaucluse and Gard decided on Monday to limit fuel sales in stations in the department, until Thursday inclusive, in particular to 30 liters per vehicle, while prohibiting the sale of gasoline in jerry cans. The lack of fuel also affects some western departments, such as Loire-Atlantique. France has 200 oil depots. The Ufip, professional union of oil companies, mentioned Monday “between five and eight blocked fuel depots”.
In the refineries, which continue to produce even if the fuel is not shipped, the strikes have also hardened recently, with the shutdown this weekend of production at the TotalEnergies site in Normandy, then at the Pétroineos refinery in Lavera (Bouches-du-Rhône). The police intervened overnight from Monday to Tuesday to unblock the Donges oil terminal (Loire-Atlantique), which had been occupied for a week by strikers, to facilitate the unloading of a cargo of diesel.