Production at Esso-ExxonMobil’s Normandy refinery shut down on Saturday, according to CGT

The Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime), whose fuel shipments are blocked to protest against the pension reform, will be forced to stop production from Saturday, for lack of crude oil to be refined. , said the CGT on Friday.

“As the movement was renewed at the CIM (Compagnie industrielle maritime), on the oil depot in Le Havre, there will be no crude supply to the Gravenchon refinery, which will lead to the shutdown of the installations tomorrow.“, said Christophe Aubert, CGT Esso-ExxonMobil delegate, confirming information from BFM-Normandie. “It will stop and to be able to restart, it takes ten days from the receipt of crude“, added Christophe Aubert.

Contacted by AFP, the management of Esso-ExxonMobil France could not be reached immediately. In order to avoid these long and delicate stop and restart maneuvers and their future consequences on the fuel supply of Ile-de-France and the Great West, the government would have to requisition striking personnel at the oil depot. Le Havre, an unlikely option, according to Christophe Aubert.

Read alsoFuels: supply to Ile-de-France has restarted, announces Agnès Pannier-Runacher

50% of the fuels consumed are imported by France

“The purpose of the requisitions, from what I understood from the government, is rather to send finished products. So there is very little chance that there will be crude oil shipments on the Gravenchon refinery“, located about twenty km from Le Havre, he said, referring in particular to measures of this type concerning the neighboring refinery of TotalEnergies, in Gonfreville-L’Orcher which adjoins Le Havre. In the event of requisitions to unblock fuel shipments, the quantities stored will “supply oil depots and service stations for a while, but the time to reconstitute what will be released, we will probably find ourselves in a period when there will be no products available“, continued Christophe Aubert.

Unless, he says, the strikes end and imports of petroleum products start up again. France imports 50% of the fuels consumed in the country. The supply of fuel to the Paris basin by the TotalEnergies refinery in Gonfreville-L’Orcher resumed on Friday after an intervention by the police, indicated earlier in the morning the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher .