TotalEnergies’ oil refinery in the port of Antwerp plays an important role in supplying French petrol stations. Oil production has come to a standstill due to protests against the announced pension reform. Dozens of oil tankers cannot dock.
Also in October 2022, a strike wave went through France and then you could not get diesel or petrol in almost half of the petrol stations. Now far fewer pumps run dry. Just under 15 percent of the filling stations are struggling with a shortage. The French government is trying to ensure supplies by drawing on the country’s strategic oil reserves. And it can also count on substantial imports, including from our country.
The production of the oil refinery in the port of Antwerp does not normally go to France, because TotalEnergies supplies the filling stations from its refineries in France itself. According to the group’s Belgian spokesman, Tom Claerbout, ‘a very significant amount of petrol’ is now going to France. For example, the Antwerp oil refinery helps to ensure that the supply of petrol to French petrol stations does not run dry.
Unseen sea view
France’s oil supply has not been self-evident for several weeks. The protests against the pension reform provoked strikes in oil refineries and terminals. As a result, oil tankers can no longer unload their cargoes of crude oil in the country’s two major oil transhipment terminals. They are located near the port city of Le Havre on the Atlantic coast and in the southern French port of Marseille.
The current sea view of the major French ports is unseen these days. A collection of large oil tankers is anchored there. For the port of Marseille there were already twelve on Wednesday, including one of the largest oil ships in the world. This belongs to the fleet of Frontline, the Cypriot oil company that tried to merge with the Belgian Euronav last year.
According to calculations by the press agency Bloombergall those tankers together have at least 14 million barrels of crude oil on board. That number is equivalent to about 15 percent of global oil production per day. Oil supplies to France have more than halved this month.
