“32,000 km of piping to be redone”: Second refinery in France “completely shut down” for “corrosion and leaks”

For more than a week, the Donges site, the second largest refinery in France, has been “completely closed” due to “corrosion and leaks”, the CGT representative of this Total Energy site, located near Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique). . “This is a technical stoppage”, which has been in effect since February 20, declared CGT General Secretary Fabian Prive Saint-Lain inside the refinery.

On the same day, the Loire-Atlantique prefecture published a prefectural decree issuing a formal notice to “operators of the Total Energies Refinage France Dongs refinery”. In addition to the prefecture, the Regional Directorate for Environment, Development and Housing (Dreal), among others, is responsible for the “enforcement” of this decree, non-compliance of which may result in “legal action”. criminal offense,” according to the decree.

Half of the refinery has already been shut down

The management of the refinery confirmed through its communications department on Saturday that “following corrosion in one unit and disruption in the second, it was decided to shut down the installations by refinery teams to carry out necessary repairs. »

According to Fabian Prive Saint-Lane, “Currently, there are corrosion problems and leakage, there is a blockage at the oven (…) but 32,000 km of piping needs to be redone” at this Seveso site at a high threshold. The leaks do not represent a threat to the site’s environment, he assured, adding that the refinery will resume its activities “in a month at the end of March”.

Half of the refinery’s installations had already been shut down since mid-December following another formal notice from the Loire-Atlantique prefecture, which ordered TotalEnergies to “respect the provisions for the pipes (…)”.

“All these actions currently represent a cost of around 50 million euros per year,” TotalEnergy said on Friday, adding that it has put in place very significant means to ensure the safety of the site (of the installations).

“Low Cost Maintenance”

For Fabien Privé Saint-Lanne, the shutdown of the refinery is reversed due to a “policy of low-cost maintenance and upkeep”. “Employees are understaffed and work 12, sometimes 16 hours straight (…) which is dangerous,” lamented a union representative.

The French giant has not paid salaries to nearly twenty foreign employees, including nine Ukrainians, since December, also condemning CGT in a press release on Friday, calling it “a form of modern slavery”.

The refinery’s management assured on Saturday that it is “with utmost vigilance to ensure that all components of remuneration of contractors working at (its) site are properly paid, especially when it comes to Tier 2 subcontracts”.

According to the TotalEnergies website, the Donges platform, which covers an area of ​​about 350 hectares and employs 650 employees, is France’s second refinery, after Normandy. It has a processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year for a storage capacity of 2.2 million m3 (crude oil and finished products) according to the same source.