Selling fuel at cost: “this is unthinkable,” independent service stations answer

Faced with protest from stakeholders, Emmanuel Macron abandoned a project announced by the prime minister to allow fuel distributors to sell fuel at a loss. Instead, he is asking them to “make a cost”, in other words, “so that no one is marking up” to lower prices at the pump, he said on Sunday during his live interview on the 20:00 news on TF1 and France 2. ” An unthinkable measure for independent gas stations, which will begin operations this Monday.

“This is not possible for us,” Francis Puss, president of the gas stations and new energy division of the Mobilians union, told BFMTV. According to him, for small service stations the cost is “sales at a loss.” “Today, cost is defined as the purchase price. [auquel s’ajoute] transport. In no case (…) do we take into account the costs incurred, i.e. credit card fees, cashier’s salary, depreciation, etc. “.

“Multiplying” operations at cost will “increase the gap” with mass distribution, he fears and recalls the requirement to create a “compensation fund” for independent service stations in a competitive environment.

Operations at cost in the coming weeks

Distributors, for their part, clearly rejected Elisabeth Bourne’s proposal to sell the fuel at a loss, with SP95-E10 selling last week at an average of €1.94, while diesel cost five cents, rising from €1.88 to €1 .93 euros. . Instead, several major retail players have already announced that they are going to offer their customers at cost transactions scattered here and there in the coming weeks.

TotalEnergies, for example, has committed to not exceed €1.99 per liter of fuel until the end of the year and, if necessary, longer. “For other distributors who are not refiners, such as Total, we will ask their refiners to provide us with transparency to also see where there are those benefiting. And get your profit,” the President of the Republic said on Sunday evening, asking the head of government to bring together all the players in the fuel sector this week.