French government authorises tanker traffic during All Saints' holiday fearing fuel shortage

French government authorises tanker traffic during All Saints' holiday fearing fuel shortage

In order to ensure an adequate supply of fuel nationally, the French government has lifted the lorry traffic ban on tankers over 7.5 tonnes for the All Saints' Day period. The head of a tourist accommodation agency reported that weeks of fuel shortages had led many people to cancel their bookings for the long weekend, for fear that they would not be able to return home by car.

ECONOMY WORLD POLITICS OCTOBER 31. 2022 06:46

At the end of September, France was shaken by a large-scale strike of workers demanding a pay rise at several TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil oil refineries. Workers at five refineries went on strike, causing fuel shortages of historic proportions across the country, with some regions experiencing supply disruptions at 30 per cent of their petrol stations. The situation has since returned to normal, although Olivier Gantois, chairman of the French Union of Oil Companies (UFIP), says that there are still some difficulties in some places, particularly for unleaded petrol, which France does not import. The expert believes that there should be a significant improvement in supplies by the weekend, despite the fact that workers at two TotalEnergies refineries, at Gonfreville-L’Orcher in Seine-Maritime and at Feyzin near Lyon, are still on strike. The UFIP chair’s comments were confirmed by a spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy, who told the press that although the situation had improved significantly at a national level, the situation remained tense in the Ile-de-France region around Paris, as well as in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region in the south of the country and in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region bordering Switzerland, Le Parisien reports.

The French government has issued a decree allowing tankers over 7.5 tonnes to drive in order to avoid serious problems over the All Saints’ long weekend. According to the decree published in the Official Gazette on 27 October, the French authorities lifted the ban on vehicles transporting hydrocarbon products on 31 October, 1 and 2 November, so that these lorries can continue to deliver fuel to petrol stations. However, the scope of the decree does not include lorries carrying butane, propane and industrial use gases.

The fuel shortage, which has been going on for weeks, has not only hampered everyday transport and road haulage, it has also had a serious impact on tourism, causing significant damage to accommodation providers in the country. Corinne Jolly, head of the real estate and accommodation agency Particuler a Particulier (PAP), said in an interview recently that a significant number of All Saints’ period bookings for accommodation accessible by car in the region around the capital had been cancelled. Holidaymakers feared that if they went to their destination they might not be able to fill up enough to get home safely, due to fuel shortages, PAP’s head opined, adding that the number of bookings fell by 37 per cent in a single week.


The above figures were confirmed by Frank Delvau, the chair of the French hotel and restaurant association UMIH in the capital, who wrote on Twitter that 30 per cent of bookings were cancelled by customers.

 

 

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all saints holidays, france, fuel allowed to be transported, government order, lack of fuel