The announcement officially fell on Tuesday.
But it had been months since the 400 employees of Grandpuits (Seine-et-Marne), owned by Total, feared it.
The site's refining activities, i.e. the transformation of crude oil (4.8 million tonnes / year) into fuel (gasoline, diesel, fuel oil), will cease in the first quarter of 2021, after 54 years of activity.
The storage of petroleum products will continue until the end of 2023.
Refining overcapacity in Europe
The fault, officially, with the pipeline which supplies the refinery from Le Havre and whose state did not cease to decay.
A first leak had taken place in 2014 in Seine-Maritime.
Another occurred in 2019 in Yvelines.
And the group knew that replacing this 262 km long pipe would cost at least several hundred million euros.
But the problem is actually much more global.
Total, which operates four more crude oil refining sites in France (plus a biorefinery), suffers, like the entire European sector, from overcapacity, in a context of general decline in demand for petroleum products.
As early as 2015, the French Union of Petroleum Industries (Ufip) predicted in a report the closure of a quarter of the 79 refineries still in operation.
The hemorrhage is therefore in progress.
Less expensive to convert the site than to clean it up
Does this mean the final closure of the site?
"No", answers the management of Total, which presented a conversion project to the trade unions this Thursday morning at the headquarters of Defense (Hauts-de-Seine), during a social and economic committee.
“This project, called Galaxie, represents an investment of 500 million euros, specifies Patrick Pouyanné, the head of Total.
This will make it possible to promote sectors of the future and accelerate the transformation of the group.
"
A profitable operation for the group since it would have cost even more (600 million euros) to clean up the site in order to bring it up to environmental standards.
For 100 million euros less, Galaxie therefore plans to transform Grandpuits into a “zero oil platform” over the next four years, based on four main activities.
First of all, photovoltaics.
With from 2022 the installation on the site, but also on the neighboring depot of Gargenville, of two solar power plants of 24 and 28 megawatts (MW), the equivalent of the consumption of a city like Dreux (30,000 inhabitants) in Eure-et-Loir.
Then, recycling, the following year, with a plant allowing, thanks to a chemical and non-mechanical process, to revalue 15,000 t / year of plastic practically to infinity, compatible with food packaging.
Biofuel also, in 2024, "without palm oil, but based on animal fat, used cooking oil and rapeseed oil from local sources", Total promises.
With a capacity of 400,000 t / year, this production will be primarily intended for the air and road sectors.
Make Grandpuits a major bioplastics plant
Finally, still in 2024, Grandpuits will host the largest European bioplastic production plant (100,000 t / year), built on the same model as its big Thai sister, opened in 2018. Designed based on renewable resources such as corn starch, tapioca roots or sugar cane, this biodegradable and recyclable plastic allows the manufacture of all kinds of products, such as yoghurt pots, cups or even certain automotive equipment.
150 early retirement or mobility
What about jobs?
Total wants to be reassuring on this subject.
"We do not close any site, do not fire anyone," says a spokesperson.
Of the 400 jobs on the Grandpuits platform and its Gargenville depot, 250 jobs will be maintained.
The remaining 150 will be transformed into early retirement departures, or mobility to other sites.
The management also says that the site should provide up to 1,000 additional construction jobs during the three years of construction of the new units.
It is also counting on 200 additional indirect and permanent jobs after 2024.
