PARIS (AFP) – France’s TotalEnergies said on Sunday it would advance annual pay talks with unions if they dropped a blockade of fuel depots and refineries that has slashed petrol supplies across the country.
Vehicle owners have faced increasingly long waits to fill up after two weeks of strikes by workers demanding higher wages in response to soaring prices.
“I haven’t been able to work for two days now,” complained 60-year-old taxi driver Thierry.
He had “gone round the whole of Paris” to find fuel and had already been waiting for three hours at a filling station in the capital for fuel tankers to turn up, he said.
Like other major oil companies, TotalEnergies has seen its profits soar as energy prices skyrocket during the war in Ukraine. Government officials have been pressing the company to settle the standoff.
