The French government on Tuesday threatened to use force to break up blockades at refineries and oil depots shut down by striking workers, while motorists continued to besiege petrol stations hoping to fill up their tanks.
About a third of petrol stations in France were still low or out of gas as strikes at energy giant TotalEnergies and other oil majors entered their third week and wage negotiations stalled.
Government ministers and President Emmanuel Macron have been pushing for a negotiated solution to the crisis, but on Tuesday government spokesman Olivier Veran threatened violence to end blockades that have paralyzed several refineries and oil depots in France.
If blockades were not ended “immediately”, Veran told the broadcaster RTL, “we will intervene, which means that we could intervene to lift them”.
The government could then “request qualified personnel” to ensure the situation could “return to normal,” he said.
He said the ongoing actions by the hard-left CGT union at TotalEnergies assets were “exaggerated and out of the ordinary”.
The oil giant’s management is “rightly demanding that the blockades be lifted before negotiations can begin,” Veran said.
Also on Tuesday, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called lifting the blockades “the only solution”.
Once access to refineries and depots is clear, it would take about two weeks for the fuel situation to return to normal, Veran said.
Shutdowns continued at several refineries, including France’s largest refinery near Le Havre in the north of the country, after strikers at TotalEnergies voted on Tuesday to extend their action.
“We’re still waiting for details from management on what they want to negotiate,” Eric Sellini, coordinator of the CGT union at the oil company, told AFP.
– ‘What a mess’ –
The unions at the French subsidiary of Esso-ExxonMobil also renewed their call for strikes on Tuesday and rejected a salary offer from management.
Motorists formed long queues in front of gas stations from early Tuesday. Traffic slowed in central Paris as waiting cars blocked roads, bike lanes and pedestrian crossings hoping to be served before the pumps ran dry.
Many took to social media to share tips. A post in a Facebook group on Monday said a local BP petrol station would be restocked “at 2.30pm”. Another replied: “It’s 2.37pm now and they’re out of diesel.”
Another user responded: “What a mess.”
The petrol crisis comes at a time of high energy prices and inflation, which are reducing the purchasing power of French households.
The left-wing opposition coalition Nupes called for a “march against the high cost of living” in Paris and elsewhere on Sunday.
Several prominent French people supported the initiative over the weekend, including this year’s Nobel Prize winner for literature, Annie Ernaux.
Left-wing opposition politicians were quick to criticize the government’s hardened stance on Tuesday.
“When dialogue with this government falters, it’s threats to wage earners and caresses to bosses. And yet it is management that is escalating the situation,” tweeted Manuel Bompard, an MP for the left-wing LFI party.
“They act as if normal people don’t matter,” said his LFI colleague Francois Ruffin.
Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right RN party, said the government failed to foresee the crisis, adding that “super profits at Total and the salary of the chairman” made workers’ demands “not unreasonable”.
But Gilles Platret, vice-president of the conservative LR party, backed the government’s tougher stance, saying the strikers were “taking an entire country hostage”.
TotalEnergies reported earnings of $5.7 billion in the second quarter of the year, more than double the year-ago figure.
CEO Patrick Pouyanne’s total compensation package was 5.9 million euros ($5.7 million) in 2021, up 52 percent year-on-year, according to the group’s annual report.
