Does the big strike day of March 7 revive the specter of gasoline shortages among the French?
Motorists seem to have begun to exercise caution this weekend when going to refuel.
“We have seen increases of 15 to 30% depending on the location,” explains BFM Business Francis Pousse, president of the fuel distributors branch of the Mobilians union.
However, Francis Pousse adds that “at the moment, we have no worries.” Gasoline depots and refineries replenished their inventory in anticipation of disruptions to come, which was not the case last October when many stations ran out of water, he notes.
Totalenergies also indicates that its stocks are at a “very high level” and wants to be reassuring by specifying that a refinery does not stop working in one day, even if there are strikes.
“It takes two or three days to shut down a refinery,” says the oil giant.
Don’t worry about March 7th, but after?
On the RTL microphone on Monday morning, Thierry Cotillard, the head of the Les Mousquetaires group – which includes the Intermarché brand – added a gray tone to the reassuring words of Mobilians and Totalenergies by warning that, in their stores, “if the the refineries are blocked, we could run out of gasoline by the end of the week.”
The March 7 movement differs from previous ones in that several sectors want to renew their strike for several days, including the oil sector. France could therefore be “stopped”, as the unions that harden their movement against the pension reform hope, not only this Tuesday but the rest of the week. The duration of the movement, therefore, will make a difference.
Totalenergies and Francis Pousse specify that the shortages at the stations are due to route problems and not to a lack of fuel.
France has seven refineries and 200 gasoline depots, of which about half of its fuel supply comes from abroad.
Source: BFM TV
