Oil depots, ports, roads, trains: new blocking actions across the country against pension reform

Several blocking actions against the pension reform, affecting oil depots, ports, roads, air transport, the gas sector and universities, took place across the country on Wednesday, before the 9th day of interprofessional mobilization against the pension reform on Thursday

Oil depots, ports, roads, trains: new blocking actions across the country against pension reform

Several blocking actions against the pension reform, affecting oil depots, ports, roads, air transport, the gas sector and universities, took place across the country on Wednesday, before the 9th day of interprofessional mobilization against the pension reform on Thursday .

- Fuel

At the national level, the situation is deteriorating slightly, with 14.30% of service stations in short supply of at least one type of fuel against 12% on Tuesday, and 7.13% are dry, against 6% on Tuesday.

In the South-East, the Alpes-Maritimes have announced a rationing of the quantities of fuel available at the pump, as previously Gard, Vaucluse, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence or Var.

In France, only one out of four TotalEnergies refineries is in operation.

The two Esso-ExxonMobil refineries are still running: that of Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône), which operates at minimum flow, and that of Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon (Seine-Maritime). However, fuel shipments remain blocked at both sites.

On the oil depot side, that of Puget-sur-Argens (Var), was blocked on Wednesday for seven hours.

Two simultaneous blocking actions on two roundabouts serving two oil depots were also carried out north of Bordeaux.

On the port of Lorient (Morbihan), the two entrances leading to the oil depot were blocked in the morning by a hundred demonstrators, who were repelled by the police.

- Ports

The ports of Marseille-Fos and Brest were totally blocked on Wednesday as part of a day of action "dead ports" at the call of the CGT union.

In addition, in the port area of ​​Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), demonstrators carried out a punch action in the morning, lighting fires on the accesses leading to the port.

- Routes

Pallet and tire fires lit by demonstrators led to the closure for more than eight hours of the A55 in the Fos-Marseille direction, causing major traffic jams.

In Savoie, a hundred demonstrators carried out two free toll operations between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. on the A43 and the A430 at the tolls of Chambéry Nord (without Lyon-Chambéry) and that of Saint-Hélène-sur-Isère.

In Saint-Nazaire, a hundred demonstrators blocked the Saint-Nazaire bridge from 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

- Trains

Rail traffic was interrupted Wednesday in several stations in the south of France after the intrusion of demonstrators on the tracks. As in Toulouse, Montpellier or Nîmes

Thursday the SNCF will only be able to run half of its TGV Inoui and Ouigo and a third of its TER.

According to several union sources, the declaration of intent rate, which concerns employees obliged to declare themselves strikers 48 hours in advance to allow the transport plan to be organized, reaches 35% at the SNCF.

- Metro and RER "very disrupted"

Paris metro and RER traffic will be "very disrupted" on Thursday with partially closed lines and stations where the trains will not stop. Only the automated lines (1 and 14) will run normally, and 4 almost normally, while the others will run at variable times during the day.

On the RER side, the RATP plans one in two trains on lines A and B (the latter closing at 11:00 p.m.). Auber station will be closed. 80% of the buses will be in circulation and almost normal traffic is expected for the trams.

On the SNCF side in the Paris region, traffic will also be "very severely disrupted" with 20% to 50% of trains maintained, depending on the RER lines. The most affected line is that of the RER E with only one train in five planned.

Friday, traffic should remain "disturbed" in Ile-de-France, said the SNCF.

- Gas

According to the CGT, the gas operators at the Dunkirk terminal (North) decided to close the valves on Thursday and reduce the flow to the technical minimum for 24 hours before a general meeting on Friday morning "to see how they plan to continue the action".

In gas depots, such as that of Gournay-sur-Aronde (Oise), employees evoke the idea of ​​"drying the network", an action for the moment ruled out because a return to service takes months.

- Universities

Several universities are blocked by students.

On the Lyon 2 University Bron site, the faculty management announced that no activity would take place this Wednesday.

In Saint-Etienne, the blocking of the university, which started on Monday at the call of the student union OSE (Student Solidarity Organization) was extended on Wednesday. Sixty students on strike block access to four sites. A site of the university in Roubaix (Nord) is blocked, as well as the site of Sciences Po Lille.

In Toulouse, Wednesday evening, a thousand students met for the first time in a general assembly and voted to block the three universities in the city from Thursday, a renewable blockage.

"Thursday, we block everything," enthuses Math, 18, a student at Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University. "We've been waiting for a student mobilization for a long time, it looks like we needed 49.3 unfortunately, but it's never too late, it's only the beginning, here at Mirail we are pumped up, we're going continue to mobilize in the coming days", he promises.

- Waste

The strike of Parisian garbage collectors started on March 6 against the pension reform is renewed until Monday, according to CGT officials who are blocking access to the incineration plant in Ivry-sur-Seine (Val-de-France). -Marl).

On Wednesday, according to the town hall of Paris, 9,500 tons were strewn on the sidewalks, an estimate slightly increasing for the first time since the start of the requisitions decided on Thursday by the police headquarters.

The incineration plants of Ivry-sur-Seine and Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine) were still blocked, that of Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis) is the subject of a filtering dam and the evacuation site of Romainville (Seine-Saint-Denis) was again unblocked by the police, according to the Syctom union.

In Lyon, eight dump trucks belonging to the technical services of the metropolis were sabotaged overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.

- Air Transport

At Bordeaux-Mérignac airport, an "unexpected" air traffic control strike caused the cancellation of around thirty flights and "some delays" on Wednesday, an airport spokeswoman said.

In France for Thursday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) is asking airlines to cancel 30% of their flights at Paris-Orly and 20% at other airports.

The Marseille-Provence, Toulouse-Blagnac and Lyon-Saint-Exupéry platforms are affected by the cancellation of one in five flights on departure or arrival. These instructions seem to reflect a greater mobilization of air traffic controllers than that observed in recent days.

03/22/2023 23:14:33 -         Paris (AFP) -         © 2023 AFP