Across these 6,000 stations in France, 4,000 have even reduced their prices by more than 15 centimes (about 15 Fcfp, note), he added, during a press briefing in Bercy with the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure, after a meeting with fuel distributors.
And “this will continue in the days ahead, because little by little, it will indeed be the 10,000 stations that will lower their prices,” he assured.
The French government had announced in October that it would sell at cost to distributors 10 million barrels of diesel drawn from the strategic stocks over three months, from November to January, to lower pump prices, which had reached historically high levels since the start of the Middle East conflict.
This stock draw began on Sunday, November 1.
Serge Papin noted that it was “the first time strategic stocks are used to lower prices. Usually, it was to address shortages.”
The decrease applies to the prices of road diesel as well as domestic heating fuel and off-road diesel, used particularly by farmers and construction machinery, he elaborated.
The mechanism “covers all 10,000 service stations in France, metropolitan France, Corsica, and overseas territories. All service stations are affected”, Roland Lescure clarified.
As for “small independent distributors whose tanks are full”, and “who will surely take a little longer to pass on these reductions”, the economy and finance minister spoke of putting in place “a special arrangement for them, a zero-interest loan, that allows them to manage their cash flow if they wish to pass this decrease on upstream.”
The government has “planned to provide a full update at the end of the week, and we will of course be extremely transparent about all the figures.”, he further promised.
Roland Lescure praised an “innovative mechanism that directly benefits our fellow citizens, which costs the state nothing in these times when the budget deficit is a major constraint.”
