Staff requisitions, police interventions, renewed strike: update on mobilization in refineries

The energy sector remains particularly mobilized against the pension reform. About 15% of service stations were out of at least one fuel on Friday morning March 24, according to public data analyzed by Agence France-Presse (AFP). In the nine most affected departments – Loire-Atlantique, Morbihan, Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire, Ille-et-Vilaine, Ariège, Bouches-du-Rhônes, Hérault and Var – between two and five out of ten service stations are dry, according to this data.

Requisitions of personnel, interventions of the police, renewed strike: the point on the mobilization in the refineries against the pension reform, a week after its adoption.

The supply of fuel to the Paris basin, and in particular kerosene, by the large TotalEnergies refinery in Gonfreville-l’Orcher in Normandy resumed on Friday after an intervention by the police and the requisition of four employees.

“The pumping has restarted” and “this makes it possible to supply Ile-de-France”, declared the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. The Le Havre-Paris pipeline supplied from the refinery also serves the Paris airports. The police also intervened to unblock two oil depots: in Port-la-Nouvelle (Aude), which had been blocked since March 16, and in Frontignan (Hérault).

Several personalities, including the actress Adèle Haenel, the economist close to La France insoumise Frédéric Lordon or the Le Havre rapper Médine, came to support the strikers at the TotalEnergies refinery in Normandy on Friday afternoon. “What we want is to impose a balance of power and that is what is being played out here with the refiners,” said Adèle Haenel, who came from Paris with one hundred and fifty students in two chartered buses. by the General Strike Network.

In front of the refinery, the approximately 500 people gathered around 1 p.m., according to the police, were also joined by Medina. “We defend our strikers, our conscripts, because seeing fathers of families forcibly requisitioned to take them to work while they are on strike is part of the reason why I am here,” he told the Agency. France-Presse the 40-year-old artist.

The refusal to take over, which still blocks production and the majority of shipments from the refinery, was renewed for seventy-two hours at the 2 p.m. general meeting. But for safety reasons, employees and unions have agreed to authorize shifts, one of the employees having been present on the site for fifty hours, according to the CGT.

According to CGT secretary general Alexis Antonioli, four new employees were requisitioned for the afternoon shift after the first requisitions on this site early Friday to ship kerosene to Paris airports.

At the TotalEnergies refinery in Donges (Loire-Atlantique), where the strike was renewed until March 31, six employees were requisitioned according to the inter-union. The objective is to supply the Vern-sur-Seiche depot, near Rennes.

The gendarmes came knocking on the door of three employees around 11 a.m. Friday “to go and requisition them, to go and turn the valves,” explained Fabien Privé Saint-Lanne, CGT delegate for the site. At the same time, three other employees already present in the refinery were requisitioned until the end of the morning shift, according to him. The Ministry of Energy Transition confirmed the information.

In the early afternoon, a hundred people escorted the three employees requisitioned for the afternoon shift into the refinery, singing “We are here”, noted a journalist from the AFP. “Our comrades were under stress, under pressure,” lamented Fabien Privé Saint-Lanne. “To my knowledge, today [Friday] anyway the loading of the Vern-sur-Seiche depot is not relevant, since there would be a technical problem”, he underlined.

According to the union representatives present in front of the refinery, new employees could be requisitioned for each next shift.

The Esso-ExxonMobil refinery in Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime), whose fuel shipments are blocked, will be forced to stop production from Saturday, due to a lack of crude oil to be refined.

“As the movement has been 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 facilities 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 Mr. Aubert.

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. du Havre, an unlikely option, according to Mr. Aubert.

“The purpose of the requisitions, from what I understand from the government, is more to send finished products. So there is very little chance that there will be any crude oil shipments to the Gravenchon refinery,” located about 20 kilometers from Le Havre, he said.

Regarding the other French refinery of the Esso-ExxonMobil group, in Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône), it “continues to operate”, said management, according to which production is reduced to a minimum, and shipments , blocked.