About Sagess
Focus
Obligations and guarantees
Focus
Learn more about the European directive on minimum strategic oil reserves.
Controlling Logistics
Focus
Discover the pipeline owned by SAGESS, connecting the storage site of Manosque to the Berre area.
News on Sagess
Availability
Supply of strategic reserves
In the event of a crisis, SAGESS must ensure an optimal supply of strategic reserves. Whether due to an extreme climate event, an international political crisis or a social crisis in France, SAGESS must be able, under injunction of the responsible ministry, to release marketable end products. While supplies from strategic stocks are infrequent and reflect numerous realities, it is critical that SAGESS remains autonomous and not influenced by international markets (as illustrated by the IEA’s decision in July 2011). Note that during the last thirty last years there has never been a serious cut in supplies, even during the Iraq wars.
Supplies of strategic reserves by injunction
SAGESS can only release strategic reserves by injunction of the French public authorities, on request of the CPSSP or injunction of the minister in charge of hydrocarbons, in response to a supply crisis. Following a government decision, France released strategic reserves from the Manosque site to refineries in the Berre area during the internal crises of 1995,1997 and 2010. In addition, SAGESS also makes strategic reserves available under injunction of the International Energy Agency (IEA). This was the case at the end of 2005 following the hurricanes Katrina and Rita when American refineries in the Gulf of Mexico shut down. European states were mobilized to send tankers of finished oil products (gasoline) to respond to the American supply crisis and mitigate shortages.
Supplying stocks
In the event of a crisis, SAGESS guarantees a supply strategic stocks according to three methods:
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exchanging products through temporary delocalization,
- exchange of a volume of one given product for another,
- physical delocalization of a given product if there exists an equivalent on a second site,
- reducing total SAGESS reserves by loaning products or selling stocks by tender,
- using other alternatives (as approved and provided by the CPSSP: allocation based on tickets to CPSSP general reduction of the obligation for oil operators by ministerial decree).
