Imports, consumption, emissions… Franceinfo takes stock of the place occupied by oil in the country, continuing to undermine commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The world has never consumed so much. With the post-Covid reopening of China and the increase in air traffic, the year 2023 is set to break a new record for oil consumption. In France, the trend is rather towards a slight decline, but black gold has long been a historic source of energy for the country and still remains widely used: nearly 28% of primary energy consumption comes from oil, in second position behind nuclear power.
Where does our oil come from? In what forms is it consumed? Are we really burning less and less? While debates on energy often focus on questions linked to electricity, renewable energy and nuclear power, franceinfo takes stock of the orders of magnitude of this fossil energy, which is still central in France and heavily emits gas. Greenhouse effect.
Nearly a quarter of our oil comes from Russia and Saudi Arabia
France’s supply of crude oil and refined products depends almost entirely on foreign countries. According to provisional data from the Professional Petroleum Committee (CPDP) for 2022, France imported 40.6 million tonnes of crude oil, to which are added 42.2 million tonnes of refined products. Regarding crude oil, our main suppliers are Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the United States. For the latter, the quantities imported have only increased since 2018. Regarding finished products (diesel, kerosene, etc.), the leading countries of origin are Russia (including in 2022), the -Bas and Saudi Arabia.
To get a more global idea of the origin of the oil consumed in France, we aggregated import data from the last five years, combining figures for crude oil and refined products. Thus, according to these calculations, almost 25% of the oil processed or consumed in France comes from Russia and Saudi Arabia.
But who said that in France, we didn’t have oil? According to the CPDP, in 2022 around 600,000 tonnes of oil actually came from French subsoils. A figure divided by three since the end of the 1980s, a period when the Paris and Aquitaine basins were at their peak of production. Today, oil “made in France” represents less than 1% of national consumption. The wells currently in operation are mainly operated by a subsidiary of the Canadian company Vermilion Rep. In 2017, Parliament passed a law banning new hydrocarbon exploration projects.
According to CPDP data for 2022, of the 82.8 million tonnes of imported oil, 66.2 are used for domestic consumption, 14.1 are exported as refined products, and 1.2 million tonnes are consumed by international maritime traffic.
Three ports, seven refineries and 200 storage depots in France
Crude oil arrives in France via the three ports able to receive and store it: Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique) and Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône). This is also where we find some of the refineries transforming crude oil into refined products. France has six, operated by TotalEnergies (Gonfreville, Donges, Feyzin), Esso (Fos, Gravenchon) and Petroineos (Lavera). A seventh is in Martinique.
The products thus refined then cross France along the kilometers of oil pipelines, to reach the 200 secondary depots allowing the storage of approximately 10 million m3 fuel. France also has 25 depots to receive and store imports of already refined oil. According to the French Union of Petroleum Industries (Ufip) Energies et Mobilités (PDF), strategic stocks make it possible to cover three months of consumption. Some departments are better equipped than others from an inventory perspective, as shown in the map below.
Oil burned in transport, but not only
If our energy consumption depends for a third on oil, the sectors of activity are very unequal in terms of dependence on this energy. In pole position: transport, which relies 90% on oil due to the use of fuel. Agriculture and fishing follow, with an oil share of 70%, as shown in the graph below. The tertiary, industrial and residential sectors (housing, habitat) have reduced their dependence on this fossil energy since the 1990s, with, in 2022, between 9 and 12% of their energy consumption coming from oil. These three sectors also consume a lot of gas, another energy source that emits greenhouse gases.
Logically, it is therefore transport which also consumes the largest share of refined products in France, at 60%. This is what the following graph shows, with the annual consumption of diesel and gasoline in France in yellow and green, and aeronautical fuels, called jet fuels, in sky blue. But these products do not represent all of those obtained from crude oil. Petrochemicals also consume around 10% of all petroleum products. This industry is transformative, according to statistics from the Ministry of Energy Transition (PDF), raw materials in chemicals or plastics, among others. Domestic fuel oil, the use of which to heat homes is about to disappear, is seeing its share gradually reduce but today still occupies more than 6.3% of consumption.
The graph above also allows us to see the major changes in petroleum products, in their entirety, as all the curves stack up. While in the 1970s, the use of heavy fuel oil increased total consumption beyond 100 billion tonnes, this figure decreased until 1985. Driven by the widespread use of automobiles, the use of products from oil prices then increased again until 2001. “Total consumption has been trending downward sincenotes the Ministry of Ecological Transition. This long-term trend is mainly attributable to industry, residential and tertiary sectors.
Diesel and gasoline well anchored in our uses
In the transport sector, the use of oil is hardly decreasing. And for good reason: according to our calculations based on data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, in 2022, the car fleet of private vehicles was made up of 97.7% cars running on diesel or gasoline. Overall, the size of this vehicle fleet is constantly increasing. And we are seeing a reversal of trend between diesel, long favored by an advantageous tax policy, and gasoline. The first represented 64% of the fleet in 2015 but is gradually being reduced in favor of gasoline, which has gone from 35 to 42% over the last six years.
In the graph below, you can compare the proportions of each energy source within the vehicle fleet, but also within new registrations. Among the latter, the share of electric cars is increasing sharply but it is very far from reversing the trend in the park as a whole. Overall, according to data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, road fuel consumption in France has been stable since the early 2000s.
The challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Report after report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) repeats: human activities, notably the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil (which, along with coal and gas, is responsible for 64 % of CO2 emissions, according to the IPCC), have led to an unprecedented increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and a warming of the average temperature on Earth.
Unsurprisingly, the sectors emitting the most CO2 are those which consume the most fossil fuels. According to the High Council for the Climate (PDF), Transport is thus responsible for 31% of greenhouse gases in France, half of which comes from cars. For the moment, France is trying to respect its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: emissions since 2019 calculated by the Interprofessional Technical Center for Atmospheric Pollution Studies (Citepa) were well below the limit set in the second National Low-Carbon Strategy (2019, in orange below), but well above the threshold set in 2015 by the first (in red).
“The whole challenge is to convince people to consume less”explains Jean-Nicolas Fiatte, of the CPDP. “Apart from the price signal, and therefore increasing taxes on oil, I don’t see how we could do it”. Individuals are not the only ones to convince. “It is difficult to make drastic policies on fuels, because it is a huge source of money for the State”explains Anna Creti, professor of economics at Paris Dauphine University.