A white hour.
No port worker or docker will work this Wednesday, March 16 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., from the port of Marseille-Fos (Bouches-du-Rhône) to that of Loon-Plage (North), via Lorient (Morbihan), Le Havre (Seine-Maritime)… “In support of Ukraine, we will deploy the same banner for the peace of all peoples”, indicates Pascal Pontac, the general secretary of the CGT of the port of Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique ).
The decision follows the refusal of English dockers to "touch" the Russian gas transported by the giant of the seas "Boris Vilkitsky" so as not to contribute to financing the Russian invasion.
The boat had been rerouted to the coasts of France towards Montoir-de-Bretagne (Loire-Atlantique) where Greenpeace activists had reserved a reception committee for it.
In the Netherlands too, the comrades of the FNV Haven union are preparing for legal proceedings for not having unloaded gas, coal and oil from Russia.
In France, the strike lasting sixty short minutes will not stop Russian imports, the boss of the CGT of Saint-Nazaire knows it well: “It is a symbol but above all a national display!
he insists.
In reality, to transfer the gas and oil from the ships to the ground, it is not the employees of the French ports but agents of GDF or Total who operate.
Not to mention, believes Pascal Pontac, that “even if we stopped all transport by sea, the gas pipelines would continue to circulate this energy”.
“LNG carriers arrive in single file in France”
For the moment, the Versailles summit last week, which brought together representatives of the twenty-seven states of the European Union with the particular objective of becoming less dependent on Russian imports, has not led to any stoppage of the purchase of Russian energies and “we will in particular continue to bring in gas from Yamal”, sighs the former docker.
Yamal, named after this peninsula in Western Siberia, is a sticking point for supporters of an embargo on this windfall for Moscow and a major joint venture between Russian Novatek (50.1%), French TotalEnergies (20%) and Chinese funds.
"From this deposit in the Russian Arctic, LNG carriers arrive in single file in France, each icebreaker that touches our coasts contains 170,000 cubic meters, i.e. an average day of gas consumption at the national level", analyzes Jacky Bonnemains, the president of the Robin des bois association, a connoisseur of maritime transport.
For the NGO, "our country could quite simply do without these imports until the situation calms down insofar as we import gas from Norway via a gas pipeline and that LNG carriers transport it from the States States, Algeria or Qatar".
For French dockers and port workers, it is difficult today to replace the State which manages the ports in France: "If tomorrow the State decides, and I hope so, to stop all transport of goods in from and to Russia, we will do it with pleasure!
“, insists Pascal Pontac, who specifies that he is not targeting the Russian people but “the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin”.
