French refinery, dock strikes end, crude unloading
French refinery and port workers have called off a month-long strike over changes to pension rights. Crude processing units are restarting and a backlog of seaborne deliveries is beginning to clear.
Workers belonging to the CGT union voted to end the strikes at TotalEnergies' 219,000 b/d Donges, 109,000 b/d Feyzin and 246,900 b/d Gonfreville refineries. The company told Argus today that none of its workers are on strike and that deliveries to customers have resumed at all its sites. Donges will begin restarting units today, said TotalEnergies. It was shut ahead of the strikes as a result of a second fire in a year. The pace of repair work is unclear, but it appears to be complete. Gonfreville is also restarting.
Workers voted to end industrial action at TotalEnergies' Flanders logistics depot last week, and staff have returned at the company's 500,000 t/yr La Mede hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) facility.
ExxonMobil workers voted to end strike action last week and the company's 236,000 b/d Port Jerome refinery and adjacent Gravenchon petrochemical unit are close to resuming full operations. Its 133,000 b/d Fos refinery and UK-Chinese refiner Petroineos' 207,100 b/d unit at the Mediterranean port of Lavera are beginning to receive crude after an absence of more than three weeks, the result of a dockers' strike at the port of Fos-Lavera.
That caused a particularly large tanker backlog, containing more than 12mn bl of crude at its peak, plus a string of oil products, biofuels and oxygenate cargoes.
A shipment of around 1.1mn bl of Angolan 35.2°API Olombendo crude, destined for Petroineos, was among the first to unload from very large crude carrier (VLCC) Nave Electron, one of three VLCCs caught up in the congestion. A 600,000 bl cargo of Libyan grades Amna and Sirtica has discharged for ExxonMobil, and a similar sized cargo of Algerian Saharan Blend has unloaded for Petroineos.
Cargoes of Caspian CPC Blend, Libyan Mellitah and 745,000 bl of 10ppm diesel are discharging. The former, on Suezmax Euro, has been waiting at the port since 14 March.
The strikes started on 6-7 March and are likely to have prompted significant draws from oil products stocks to sate domestic consumption. Seaborne crude and products imports were all but halted at Fos-Lavera and at the northern port of Le Havre. Workers were requisitioned, at Gonfreville and storage firm DPF's Fos terminal, to draw on storage. Trading firms said French national stocks at Sagess were being drawn.
Strikes over wages and inflation at the end of 2022 prompted a 4.9mn bl draw on diesel stocks in September, and then a 10mn bl build in November-December, according to Eurostat. A rebuild of French diesel stocks following this year's strikes is likely to support European diesel demand and imports.
Unions said today there will be another round of stoppages on 13 and 14 April, but these are planned for 48 hours only.
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