PARIS. The crisis at French gas stations, which suffered from fuel shortages for days because of the strikes that began three weeks ago at the TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil refineries and deposits, is not over yet. As documented by the French Oil Industry Confederation, France can count on around 200 oil depots to power the approximately 45 million vehicles registered in the country. The closure of these factories will also cut off supplies to the 11,000 gas stations in the country.
But how does the fuel chain work in France? The first step is the import of crude oil and finished products such as diesel, which dock at the ports of Le Havre, Saint-Nazaire and Marseille. From here, the imported materials are transferred to one of the eight industrial processing platforms in the metropolitan region. Five of these, including two biorefineries, belong to the TotalEnergies Group, two to the Esso Group and one to the British Petroineos Group. The package is completed by the Lamentin refinery in Martinique, managed by the Sara company and operating in overseas territories. After conversion, the various fuels are transported through a network of pipelines, ships and trains to oil production sites where the fuels are stored before being shipped to fuel stations.
According to the Ministry of the Environment, France has a storage capacity for petroleum products of 46 million cubic meters, 50 percent of which is concentrated in two regions: Normandy and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Refineries and associated depots cover about 33 percent of the total storage capacity, underground locations 20 percent and airports 1 percent. The remaining 47 percent are carried by around 200 secondary deposits of various sizes throughout the country. But France also has strategic stocks, equivalent to three months’ consumption, spread across 90 sites. These include an underground storage facility of 9.2 million cubic meters at Manosque in the Alpes de Haute Provence, which is linked to the Marseille and Fos-sur-Mer refineries. For example, the government decided last weekend to resort to it to deal with the emergency.