Fuel shortage in sight? It is in any case the project of the CGT in a conflict over the pension reform which is hardening. The shutdown of the facilities at the TotalEnergies refinery in Normandy “began Friday evening”, the CGT secretary general of the country’s largest refinery, Alexis Antonioli, told AFP on Saturday. “The units have been on hold since last night,” he added. This shutdown will take several days, however, and should not cause immediate fuel shortages at gas stations across the country.
The stoppage of shipments by the strikers causes “de facto the stoppage of the installations”, continued Mr. Antonioli, “the stocks being already full” on the site of the refinery. “From Thursday afternoon the strikers” present in the refinery to ensure its safety “refused to proceed with the shipments” but “the management not wishing to stop the refinery, they decided to no longer provide relief”.
“After 22 or even 33 hours of presence for certain employees, the management ended up giving in on Friday to obtain fresh teams” by giving the instructions to stop, still according to Mr. Antonioli. “Shipments are blocked on the refining side, which induces a different operation on the very many production units”, indicated the management of the group, joined by AFP. “Our priority is to maintain safety, which leads us to put certain units in preferential recirculation or to stop some if necessary to guarantee inventory management”, added the management, which affirms that “other units on the platform remain in normal operation and ensure their production”.
Shutdown operation until Monday
This could not last, according to Éric Sellini, CGT union coordinator for the group, who specifies that “the operations (of stoppage) are scheduled until Monday evening”. He assured AFP that there is “nothing more coming out” of the refinery.
The shutdown of the Normandy refinery could be the first in a series, according to him: in addition to the PétroIneos refinery in Lavéra (Bouches-du-Rhône), whose CGT indicated on Friday that its shipments were stopped and predicted shutdown for Monday afternoon “at the latest”, the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime) could be shut down on Monday or Tuesday, for lack of crude oil to be refined , due to a strike at the oil depot in Le Havre. The management of Esso-ExxonMobil, contacted by AFP, could not be reached immediately.