Three weeks of strike and the movement continues. While the morning strikers of the oil sites of TotalEnergies renewed their movement on Wednesday, in the country, a significant number of service stations were still short of gasoline or diesel, almost one in four, according to Prime Minister Elisabeth Thick headed. Only three of the seven French refineries are not affected by the strike. To cope, the government reopened the floodgates of blocked sites with the help of requisitions from employees, the last one again targeting the TotalEnergies site in Feyzin in the Rhône on Wednesday morning, according to Eric Sellini, CGT coordinator.
“There are still three regions to which we will have to put more energy: Ile-de-France is still today above 30%, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes . It is for this reason that we are requisitioning the Feyzin depot this morning to help relieve Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté”, announced Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for Energy Transition on France Info Wednesday. “Ten people” will be requisitioned, she specified before noting an “improvement” in particular in Hauts-de-France, where “we observe a very rapid improvement” passing “from 55% to less than 20% today stations that have at least one product missing,” she explained.
Tuesday evening, at the end of a day of strikes and demonstrations throughout the country, the CGT proposed the “renewal of the movement” of the refineries initiated on September 27 until Wednesday at midday, when new general meetings. The morning renewal of the strike also concerns the refineries and depots of TotalEnergies in La Mède, Feyzin (the depot, the refinery being shut down for technical reasons) and Flandres (depot), confirmed Eric Sellini.