Operations at French oil refineries could be disrupted next week amid union calls to extend strike action in protest at the government’s decision to ram through a retirement age hike to 64 years.

Refineries in France have been disrupted for more than a week by strike action against the government’s planned pension changes, which President Emmanuel Macron pushed through without a parliamentary vote on Thursday, causing unrest overnight.

At oil major ExxonMobil’s Esso-branded Port Jerome refinery in Normandy, workers have been called to strike beginning Saturday at 2 p.m. (1300 GMT), a CGT union official said Friday.

No such call could be confirmed for Esso’s Fos-sur-Mer refinery in the south. An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for TotalEnergies said Friday that while operations were normal at its Normandy site in northern France, “we may be moved to halt certain units once maximum storage levels are reached” as strike action blocks fuel send-outs.

“This will be done on a unit-by-unit basis,” the spokesperson said.

Fuel deliveries are also blocked at TotalEnergies’ La Mede biorefinery in the south, while its Donges refinery has been offline due to a technical problem with an electricity transformer, the spokesperson said.

The Feyzin refinery in the southeast is operating “almost normally”, they added.

A union official had earlier said that Donges was blocked due to the ongoing strike action, and that Normandy would be stopped this weekend.

A spokesperson for the Lavera refinery in southern France operated by PetroIneos said Friday that it had had no notification from unions about planned stoppages on Monday, and was unable to give details on crude stock levels.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Benjamin Mallet, Forrest Crellin and America Hernandez; Editing by Susan Fenton and Jan Harvey)