The gasoline shortage, fueled for a week by the refinery strike and the influx of worried motorists at the pumps, raises the question of deliveries to stations. And visibility on restocking remains low…
“We should be delivered tomorrow during the day!” If you are one of the motorists who preferred to contact a service station before going to fill up on Monday, October 10, 2022, you have certainly been confronted with this type of response, which is as expeditious as it is imprecise. After two weeks of strike in the refineries, in particular at TotalEnergies, the shortage of gasoline seriously worsened in France this weekend and this Monday, many stations found themselves dry very early in the day. And difficult to know at what time the nearest station will be delivered, the managers of the stations themselves navigating in the most complete blur.
If deliveries usually take place according to a well-established schedule, the strike movement in the depots has considerably stopped the machine upstream. Trucks that can access inventory to deliver fuel to stations can now spend long hours waiting before they can start their rounds. Delivery times are also completely disrupted, with oil groups trying to distribute fuel volumes between stations. It is not uncommon for a service station manager to see his delivery of the day canceled and postponed to the next day, which makes the information particularly nebulous for the consumer.
In an attempt to streamline deliveries and limit shortages, a ministerial decree published in the Official Journal this Saturday morning authorizes fuel transport on weekends. The government has also released strategic fuel stocks, as Elisabeth Borne said on the sidelines of a trip to Algeria this Sunday. These stocks, which should theoretically allow the country to have more than 90 days of net oil imports at all times, had not yet been massively deployed on Monday. But beware: only a part (between 50 and 60%) is made up of refined products, the rest being a stock of crude oil that cannot yet be put in vehicles.
Latest uncertainty about the effectiveness of strategic stocks in this kind of crisis: deliveries could be very random depending on the region. La Tribune reports that the Normandy and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions would together have almost half (48%) of national storage capacity. Hauts-de-France, particularly affected by the shortage, would only have 18% of these capacities and Ile-de-France, also in the red, only 8.6%, when the Auvergne region -Rhône-Alpes finished dead last at just over 6%.
The fuel shortage is now affecting all regions, even if Hauts-de-France and Ile-de-France seem to be the most exposed to tensions. According to the situation report released by the Ministry of Energy Transition this Monday morning, there were 30% of stations in shortage of at least one fuel. They were 29.7% this Sunday, 21% Saturday and 15% Wednesday according to government spokesman Olivier Véran. 54.8% of stations would be affected in Hauts-de-France and 44.9% in Ile-de-France. Here is our article compiling maps to help you find fuel:
A sign that the fuel shortage is becoming a major subject in France, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic have taken up the subject to try to unblock the situation. This Monday morning, Elisabeth Borne invited on RTL the actors of the social conflict at TotalEnergies “to sit around the table”. The boss of the government says she expects “the responsibility of the unions and the management” of the refineries “so that we can find an agreement and not penalize the French”. On Sunday, she promised that the situation would “improve throughout the week”, in particular thanks to the strategic stocks mobilized. On the sidelines of a trip to Mayenne on Monday, Emmanuel Macron for his part declared that the blocking of fuel depots was “not a way of negotiating” and called for a rapid conclusion of negotiations at TotalEnergies. Negotiations which had still not started at the beginning of the afternoon…
