PARIS (Reuters) -- France’s hard left CGT trade union threatened “war” against President Emmanuel Macron if he forced refinery strikers back to work, as the government sought to end the industrial action that has left a third of the country’s fuel stations running low.
The government on Tuesday said it was ready to intervene to end a weeks-long strike in refineries and fuel depots that has also tightened global diesel supplies.
The walkouts and unplanned maintenance at refineries in France run by oil majors TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil have forced more than 60% of national refining capacity offline and blocked distribution from fuel depots.
“This has gone on too long,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told franceinfo radio, hours after Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne held a crisis meeting with ministers late on Monday.
Le Maire said the government was ready to dip once again into strategic fuel reserves and order strikers back to work.
“If the deadlock persists we will have no other option but to requisition the means necessary to get the refineries back online and fuel depots open,” he added. “We’re talking hours, days at the most.”
The government’s threat to requisition workers to get refineries operational again and fuel trucks moving drew a furious response from the CGT.
“I can guarantee you that will be war,” senior CGT energy representative Emanuel Lepine told franceinfo radio. “If Macron wants this to spread to other parts of the economy, then let him do it.”
The strikes come against a backdrop of growing worker unrest over wages in Europe as households struggle with soaring energy and food bills, but the refineries strike is one of the longest walkouts in Europe since the cost-of-living crisis intensified this year.
The industrial action has caused snaking queues at French service stations and sent diesel refining margins to record highs in Europe and the United States read more
TotalEnergies’ 240,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Gonfreville refinery is offline, while deliveries of refined products are blocked at the 119,000-bpd Feyzin refinery, which is closed for unplanned maintenance but has fuel in storage, and at the Cote d’Opal and La Mede fuel depots.
Two Exxon Mobil refineries have also been out of action since late September.
France is ramping up imports to cover the production shortfall.
Diesel imports for the first 10 days of October were 37% higher than the whole of October last year, Vortexa senior market analyst Pamela Munger said.