Europe 1 with AFP 16:15 p.m., March 18, 2023
The TotalEnergies refinery of Gonfreville-l'Orcher, located in Normandy, the largest in the country, has been shut down since Friday evening according to the CGT. An action carried out in protest against the pension reform and the use of 49.3 to get it passed. However, the operation may not last.The shutdown of the facilities of the TotalEnergies refinery in Normandy "began Friday evening," CGT secretary general of the country's largest refinery, Alexis Antonioli, told AFP on Saturday. "The units have been stopping since last night," he added. However, the shutdown will take several days and is not expected to cause immediate fuel shortages at the country's petrol stations.
The cessation of shipments by the strikers generates "de facto the shutdown of the facilities", continued Alexis 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 shipments" but "the management did not wish to stop the refinery, they decided to no longer ensure the rotations".
Operations scheduled "until Monday evening"
"After 22 or even 33 hours of presence for some employees, the management finally gave in Friday to get fresh teams" by giving the instructions to stop, still according to Alexis Antonioli. "Shipments are blocked on the refining side, which induces a different operation on the very many production units," said the group's management, joined by AFP.
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"Our priority is to maintain safety, which leads us to put some units into recirculation preferentially or to stop some if necessary to guarantee stock management," added the management, which affirms that "other units of the platform remain in normal operation and ensure their production". This may not last, according to Eric Sellini, CGT union coordinator for the group, who specifies that "the (shutdown) operations are scheduled until Monday evening". He assured AFP that there is "nothing coming out" of the refinery.
The first stop in a long series?
The shutdown of the Normandy refinery could be the first of a series, according to him: in addition to the PetroIneos refinery in Lavéra (Bouches-du-Rhône), whose shipments the CGT said Friday were stopped and predicted the shutdown for Monday afternoon "at the latest", the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon in Seine-Maritime could be shut down on Monday or Tuesday, for lack of crude oil to refine, due to a strike at the Le Havre oil depot. The management of Esso-ExxonMobil, contacted by AFP, was not immediately reachable.