No more fuel has left French refineries since Tuesday, March 7. Mike Fouque – stock.adobe.com
FIG DATA – The CGT has been blocking certain refineries since March 7 to protest against the pension reform. What is the situation at the pump in your department?
Are the queues in front of gas stations back? Five months after the strikes in the French refineries, a new social conflict disrupts the supply at the pump. In question: the paralysis of these same refineries by the CGT-Chemistry to oppose the pension reform. Since March 7, strikes and blockades have intensified on these production sites. The consequence: 9.5% of the country’s service stations do not have either gasoline (SP 98, SP95, E10) or diesel, according to Fig Data.
Like last October, the difficulties vary greatly depending on your department. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the most affected department, more than half of the distribution places are out of stock, 40% completely dry. Neighboring territories are also experiencing difficulties. The Vaucluse prefecture has just announced the limitation of fuel sales until Thursday inclusive. In all, 23 departments had at least 10% of service stations “in difficulty” yesterday at 1 p.m., drawing a diagonal from the North-West to the South-East of France.
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Nevertheless, TotalEnergies, which operates more than half of the refineries and a third of the service stations in the country, recalls that its main stocks are at a “high level» and that his «teams are mobilized to meet demand that could be more sustained than usual“. In addition, only a few depots, out of the 200 in France, are blocked, in Ambès (Gironde) as in Donges (Loire-Atlantique).
Slightly higher prices
On the price side, the refinery blocking movement caused a slight jump. Gasoline thus rose by two cents this week, with a liter of SP98 stabilizing slightly below two euros, at €1.99. It is however ten cents more than at the beginning of the year, under the effect of the end of the rebates granted by the government and by TotalÉnergies. Diesel, too, was more expensive this week but still below its level of January 2023. It cost an average of €1.85 per liter on Friday.
Methodology : For the national or regional figures, we used the public data available on prix-carburants.gouv.fr (annual files), which centralizes the declarative data of service stations. Only service stations in mainland France that sell more than 500m are taken into account.3 of petroleum products per year, excluding E85 and LPG, which are much less used.
We considered that a station usually distributes a fuel if it declares at least one shortage or a price variation in 2023 for this fuel. Like the Ministry of Energy Transition, we considered that a place of supply is not out of gasoline if it is still powered by at least one of the three types of this fuel: SP-98, SP-95 and E10.
A station is considered “in difficulty” if:
- It is in total rupture at 1 p.m. on all of its fuels distributed (gasoline or diesel).
- It is partially out of service at 1 p.m. – either of gasoline or diesel – when it usually distributes both.
SEE ALSO – TotalEnergies refinery in Donges: “Renewable strike” until Friday, announces the inter-union
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