The proportion of service stations in France offering neither petrol nor diesel rose to 31% nationally in mid-October, and to almost half in Hauts-de-France, according to official data, a shortage more marked than the situation described by the government.

The refinery strike began on September 27 at TotalEnergies, gradually increasing the scarcity of fuels throughout France.

Regional disparities

One figure illustrates the growing shortage that has paralyzed French stations: on October 17, only 53% of stations were selling both petrol and diesel, compared to 92% before the strike on September 24, according to analysis by AFP official and public data available on the prix-carburants.gouv.fr website.

Thursday at midday, this proportion had risen to 69%.

These are national averages.

Some regions, such as Hauts-de-France with 49% of stations in total rupture on October 11 or Ile-de-France at 47% on October 10, were more affected than others.

Breakups higher than the announcements

During the crisis, the Ministry of Energy Transition communicated daily the proportion of stations "in difficulty", that is to say lacking at least one fuel, between diesel and gasoline (SP95, SP95-E10, SP98) .

This government barometer rose to 31% on national average, on October 11, and was down Thursday evening to 16.9%.

The data analyzed suggests that the ruptures were much higher, since about one out of three stations was closed, to which it was necessary to add the stations lacking one or other of the fuels.

There are around 9,900 active service stations in France, which provide their prices every day on a portal of the Ministry of the Economy, an obligation more or less well respected and which concerns those which sell more than 500 cubic meters per year.

These data can be downloaded from prix-carburants.gouv.fr.



A marked improvement this week

The ministry, when questioned, explained that it only counted service stations declaring a "shortage", but not stations ticking another box saying that a fuel is "not distributed" for other reasons, a category which is not distinguished in public data;

the ministry did not want to provide its complete data including this category.

The times of the lifts can also have a marginal influence (a few points) on the rupture rate observed.

Despite these differences, the trend remains clearly improving this week, thanks to the requisitions of striking employees and the suspension of strikes at Esso-ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies, only the last two sites of the French oil group being still on strike Thursday.

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