PETROL SHORTAGE CARD. The situation is tense in service stations in France, particularly in the South-East, affected by supply difficulties resulting from the ongoing strike movement in refineries.
[Updated 20 March 5:00 PM] Ongoing social protest at refineries, amid ongoing social protest against pension reform, raises specter of fuel shortages with gas stations running dry this Monday, March 20, 2023. If this Monday, at 10:30 a.m., around 8% of service stations in France were out of petrol or diesel according to a statement cited by AFP, the situation is much more alarming this Monday at the end of day in the southeast of the country. but several departments were experiencing a much more worrying situation.
Thus, 50% of the service stations in the Bouches du Rhône are affected by a shortage of one or more fuels, compared to 40% in the Gard, 33% in the Vaucluse or even 23% in the Var. It should be noted that Loire-Atlantique is also experiencing rupture situations with 29% of stations in difficulty. This situation follows a weekend marked by stoppages and blockages in French refineries. “It’s clear that it’s going to get tougher (…) We’ve made blockades, it’s not working. There, it’s going to be hard strike movements. All the units are going to be stopped, and so there will be the ‘total shutdown of the largest refinery in France”, announced Johan Senay, the deputy secretary of the CGT at TotalEnergies to France Bleu, Friday.
Since March 7, no more fuel leaves many refineries. For the moment, service stations are not experiencing significant difficulties. Only 2.2% of them do not have, Thursday March 16, either gasoline (SP 98, SP95, E10) or diesel, according to Le Figaro. But the difficulties vary greatly depending on the departments. Indre is the most affected territory with more than 16% of stations completely or partially out of service. Indre-et-Loire (5.5%), Vienne (5.4%) and Allier (5.1%) are also affected.
Six of the seven refineries are still blocked in France and fuel shipments are impossible from these sites where oil is transformed into gasoline or diesel. Thus, the oil depots are no longer supplied. These intermediate relays with the stations must draw on their stocks to allow the trucks to deliver the necessary fuel. Pending a potential hardening of the strike, the deposits are not blocked and the stocks of these 200 sites throughout mainland France are still well filled. Especially since refineries still continue to produce fuel, which they store on site.
We have set up a search engine to find the list of fuels available in the stations of a department and/or a city. Only the places where the station managers have indicated the gasoline available and its price are displayed. The information is ordered by date and time of update (“UPDATE”), to maximize your chances of finding fuel:
This search engine is based on the “instant flow” of fuel prices in France, provided by the Ministry of the Economy, is available on the official website: https://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ . It is up to the point of sale concerned to declare its fuels and prices, as well as the dates and times of updates to the ministry.
The Ministry of the Economy also provides a map and a search engine. To facilitate your search, first fill in your region, your department or directly your municipality to display the stations near you.
This search engine and this map are made from the “instant feed” of fuel prices in France, provided by the Ministry of the Economy and available on the official website: https://www.prix-carburants.gouv. Fr/. This operation generates some limits, the first being that of the absence of recent updates in many stations. Some prices or availability have not been entered for several days. Here is the manual anyway:
Another possibility is to use the map developed by the MonEssence.fr app, which is usually used to identify fuel prices near you based on feedback from users who themselves fill in the prices observed at the pump. In times of shortage, the app puts a map of the shortage online, always based on user feedback. It is not always fully up to date or regularly updated, but it provides an overall map of the situation in France.