PARIS — Scattered fuel shortages rattled drivers and France’s main airport warned Saturday that some flights would have to arrive with enough of their own fuel to get back home, against a backdrop of hundreds of thousands marching for the fifth time in a month to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age to 62.
Frequent strikes in the past few weeks have hobbled French trains and airports, closed schools and docks and left garbage piling up in the southern port of Marseille.
Now the airline industry is getting worried after all of France’s 12 fuel-producing refineries went on strike and many depots were blocked by protesters. Police were called in to force three crucial fuel depots to reopen Friday, including one outside Marseille.
The Civil Aviation authority sent out an advisory Friday night to airlines requiring short- and medium-haul flights to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport — one of Europe’s key hubs — to arrive with enough fuel to get home, said spokesman Eric Heraud.
“They must come with a maximum capacity in their fuel tanks,” Heraud said. “Obviously, these instructions apply only to short- and medium-haul flights” of less than four or five hours, because transatlantic flights cannot “double carry” fuel.
As fearful drivers headed to the pumps, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde urged the nation not to panic.
“Today, there is no reason, no reason, I repeat, to panic because there is no risk of shortages,” she told BFM-TV on Saturday, noting that only 230 of the country’s 13,000 gas stations were out of fuel. “There are weeks of reserve.”
The Ecology Ministry, however, said fuel stocks at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport were good only until Tuesday.
A ministry spokesman said France had not yet resorted to fuel imports from neighboring Italy or Spain. He could not be identified by name in keeping with ministry policy.
Police estimated that about 825,000 people marched in cities across France, lower than during an Oct. 12 march — and far lower than the union estimate of 3 million.
