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07 Jan 2020 | 15:09 UTC — London
By Elza Turner
London — Oil product supply remains ample across France despite a renewed call from labor unions for blockades of refineries, the government and oil companies said Tuesday.
The CGT union has called for further escalation of the industrial action at all refineries from Tuesday to Friday, with no products leaving any of the eight plants in France for 96 hours.
According to a CGT representative, all French refineries joined the industrial action Tuesday, either by stopping the dispatch of products for 96 hours, including Feyzin, Fos-sur-Mer, Lavera, Grandpuits, Donges, Gonfreville and La Mede, or by reducing run rates at some units at ExxonMobil's Gravenchon near Le Havre. Moreover, any loading and discharging from the CIM oil terminal in Le Havre, where there had been intermittent strikes between December 5 and 28, are blocked.
The Fluxel-operated Fos and Lavera oil terminals on the Mediterranean are also expected to face difficulties during the strike, the source said.
French labor unions, including the CGT, FO and FSU, called on employees in all sectors to take part in industrial action against the government's pension reforms. The on-off strike, which started December 5, has been extended several times and has now entered a second month.
So far less than 5% of refinery staff have joined the strike, Total said Tuesday. The company's Donges, Feyzin, Gonfreville, Grandpuits refineries and the La Mede biofuel plant are operating and accumulating stock to resume product deliveries once the blockades are lifted. Total said earlier that secondary units at Gonfreville were using stocks and imports after the crude distillation unit outage following a fire in mid-December.
Total said that its retail stations were well supplied on Monday before the start of the protests and are well stocked for the duration of the latest blockades.
Apart from the refineries' own oil terminals, shipments are normal from Total's remaining oil terminals and only 26 of its 3,500 service stations had supply problems as of Monday evening.
France has a total of 200 oil terminals, most of which have no delivery problems, and more than 98% of the 11,000 service stations still have normal supplies, the ecology ministry said Tuesday.
Product loadings have also been disrupted from ExxonMobil's refinery Fos-sur-Mer in southern France after "a limited number of employees" joined the protest, the company said, adding that the refinery continues to operate at normal rates.
ExxonMobil also said that "a very limited number" of workers have joined the protest at Gravenchon but there is "no impact on production that could impact supply" of products.
Meanwhile, according to union sources, staff at Petroineos' Lavera have resumed the shutdown of units after a pause over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Staff at the plant started shutting units in December, the CGT said earlier. The company declined to comment.
For shipping, operations are expected to be disrupted tis week at Le Havre, Rouen, Brest, Lorient, Donges and St. Nazaire, La Pallice, Bordeaux, as well as Fos and Lavera, according to shipping sources, after the Federation of Port and Dock Workers called for a 24-hour halt to port operations on Thursday, with further action to be decided upon Wednesday. Operations are likely to return to normal by Friday morning.
Ports halted operations on several days in December, with tug assistance also disrupted. Imports consequently faced difficulties, meaning France had to use some of its strategic stocks, market sources said in December.
France held 106 days of net imports in crude and product stocks at the end of September, well above the 90-day requirement of the International Energy Agency.
But the ecology ministry said Tuesday that refineries continued to operate since the start of the industrial action and stock levels at the oil terminals were "excellent."
--Elza Turner, elza.turner@spglobal.com; Virginie Malicier, virginie.malicier@spglobal.com; Chris To, chris.to@spglobal.com
--Edited by Alisdair Bowles, newsdesk@spglobal.com