The supply of kerosene to the Ile-de-France and its airports by Normandy "becomes critical", said Thursday to AFP the Ministry of Energy Transition which has "taken a requisition order" with regard to the strikers, which has not been notified "at this stage" to the employees of the refinery, stopped last weekend.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has been warning airlines for several days that kerosene reserves at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports are "under tension", encouraging them to take precautions.

These tensions are added to the growing shortage of gasoline and diesel in the country's service stations: according to AFP, 15% of French stations lacked one or the other of these fuels on Thursday, a rate that rises to more than 40% in Loire-Atlantique and several departments of Brittany.

Fuel shortage in metropolitan © France / AFP

"When everyone is looking to fill their tank to 100%, the system is not able to respond," Esso France CEO Charles Amyot said Thursday during a press conference to present the financial results. According to him, the problem is primarily logistics, on the side of supplying refineries with crude oil, some ports being blocked, and on the side of deliveries of gasoline to stations. Ditto for kerosene, he said, for which it is "not a stock problem".

"The government is monitoring the situation hour by hour and department by department with professionals and prefects. We intervene in a targeted manner to unblock deposits that are obstructed by demonstrators. As soon as requisitions cannot be avoided, we will assume our responsibilities," said Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

The government requisitioned for the first time three employees of the Esso refinery in Fos-sur-Mer on Tuesday, and it renewed for 48 hours these requisitions, to relieve the stations in the south of the country.

For the TotalEnergies site in Gonfreville-L'Orcher, the prefecture did not send police officers to the employees to deliver the requisition letters but it sent a bailiff Wednesday evening, according to Alexis Antonioli, CGT secretary general of the refinery.

On Thursday morning, about twenty employees were still gathered with trade unionists, refusing to enter the refinery.

'Symbol'

"The social movement is based on key sectors that are capable of having a very strong blocking impact, including that of refineries in the first place, so it was very important to travel here to support them because it also rests on their shoulders," Alma Dufour, LFI MP present on the picket line, told AFP.

The TotalEnergies refinery in Normandy is on the same pipelines as the CIM (Compagnie industrielle maritime) in Le Havre and the Esso-ExxonMobil refinery near Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon, which supply Paris airports. Fuel shipments from the Esso refinery are also blocked, according to the CGT.

A petrol station in Montpellier, March 20, 2023 © Pascal GUYOT / AFP

"The management is limited to making us the same proposals made during the night, telling us that they eventually agreed to negotiate with the prefect the suspension of requisitions, but the counterpart is to make the shipments of kerosene, which is totally absurd, because it amounts to making us ship what they requisition us for", said Mr Antonioli.

For the trade unionist, beyond the quantities of kerosene, relatively modest, the State wants to attack a "symbol", that of the first refinery to have ceased its production, and thus "break the strike movement".

TotalEnergies has only one in four refinery still operating, in Feyzin near Lyon - from where strikers continue to prevent any shipment. Two others (Donges, in Loire-Atlantique, and La Mède, in Bouches-du-Rhône) were arrested for reasons other than the strike. Petroineos' only French refinery in Lavéra (Bouches-du-Rhône) also stopped because of the strike.

Esso-ExxonMobil's two refineries, in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon and Fos-sur-Mer, are still running, but fuel shipments remain blocked, according to the CGT.

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© 2023 AFP