History of oil production in France
The history of oil production in France is intertwined with a number of petroleum companies, notably Elf Aquitaine and Total .
History until 1918
In Pechelbronn, Alsace, oil was already being extracted in the 15th century. The active today Erdpechquelle in long between Germany and France disputed Alsace is occupied since 1498 and gave the place its name: " Pech Fountain". The petroleum from the Pechelbronn layers was initially used medicinally for skin diseases.
Up until the First World War, however, there was no national oil policy in France. However, at the beginning of the war, the French government recognized the importance of oil in waging war. Without oil or petrol , planes would not fly , trucks would roll or artillery tractors would move . During the First World War, transport in France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia was still largely based on the railways , but the importance of oil and gasoline was already considerable.
History after 1918: Participation in Iraqi mining
The government quickly understood the strategic importance of oil and, with American help, looked for a suitable and solid base for its oil supply. After Germany's defeat in World War I, France instead of Germany took a 25% stake in the Turkish Petroleum Company , which shortly thereafter renamed the Irak Petroleum Company . Since then, France has received one million tonnes of crude oil a year from this company.
In 1924 the Compagnie Française de Pétrole ( CFP ) was founded, which in turn founded a subsidiary called Compagnie Française de Raffinage ( CFR ), from which the Total Group later emerged. These two companies were given responsibility by the French government for the Iraqi crude oil due to France.
Promotion in Aquitaine
On the eve of the Second World War, around 1937, French consumption was around five million tonnes a year, around 40% of which came from Iraq . The rest came from the USA , Venezuela and Romania . At the same time, between 1920 and 1935 the state granted public and private bodies extensive permits for exploration in two promising departments: the Landes department and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department . Thanks to its persistence, a gas field was discovered in Saint-Marcet in the Aquitaine Basin in southwest France in 1939 , which was then exploited by the quickly founded Régie Autonome des Pétroles ( RAP ).
When the war began, the Direction des Carburants (DICA) was created to take over the oil sector on a fiduciary basis. With this foundation, funding was launched in all regions, but especially in the southwest. To oversee all of these prospecting, another company was founded in November 1941, the Société Nationale des Pétroles d'Aquitaine ( SNPA ).
At the end of the war in 1945, prospecting and exploration was resumed, but not only in the mother country, but also in the colonial empire (which shortly afterwards became the Union Française ). The Bureau de Recherches de Pétrole (BRP) was founded for this purpose. The latter served to manage a national oil exploration program. The BRP soon became the holding company for all state holdings in the sector (SNPA, SNPLM, La Chérifienne des Pétroles ).
In 1951, the SNPA discovered a deposit in Lacq ( Béarn ), initially for crude oil and later for natural gas. This gas contains up to 15% sulfur and 10% carbon dioxide , which escape at a pressure of 670 bar. The oil is transported to the Total La Mède refinery , while the gas is further processed on site. That is why the Lacq region has become a gas processing region with facilities for desulphurisation. Initially, sulfur was seen as an undesirable product, but it has since become a very valued source of income.
African mines
Although the search for oil in the great French colonial empire , especially in Africa, had already begun in 1877, it yielded no results until 1932. The international societies withdrew from the vast, inhospitable Sahara desert.
Some experts, including Conrad Kilian , were convinced that the underground of the Sahara must hide oil reserves. In 1922 and 1927/28 he discovered geological structures in the north of the Hoggar and in the central Sahara that could be used for oil.
Another geological expert, Nicholas Menchikoff , wrote a few years later that the sandstone of some Saharan regions possessed the formation of deposits.
In 1946, in collaboration between the BRP and the Algerian government, the Société Nationale de Recherche et d'Exploitation de Pétrole en Algérie ( SN REPAL ) was founded, whose headquarters are in Hydra , the upper town of Algiers . When this company was founded in 1948, geological research began in collaboration with CFP in the Timimoun , Béni Abbès and In Salah regions , but without results.
In 1950 the Western Sahara as well as the Reggane region were explored. In 1952, together with the CFP, SN REPAL received a concession for an area of 116,000 km². In 1953, the CREPS, a company in which RAP had a majority and Shell held 35%, reached an agreement over an area of 140,000 km². Shell was granted further concessions, so that an area totaling more than 600,000 km², larger than metropolitan France, was approved for oil exploration.
Initially, no oil was produced. But in 1953/54 the CREPS discovered natural gas on Djebel Berga . In January 1956, oil was discovered in Edjeleh , in July of the same year Hassi Messaoud and in November Hassi R'Mel joined them. The finds were made by CREPS, SN REPAL and the CFP Algérie. In the south of Hassi Messaoud, in El Gassi , the SNPA also discovered deposits at the end of the 1950s. These discoveries gradually reduced France's dependence on Middle Eastern oil by 90% during that period. All of these sites enabled France, whose production was 14 million tons per year, to cover 45% of its national consumption by 1960.
History from 1960: the establishment of our own French refinery company
However, France did not have its own refineries up to this point. At the head of BRP were the "corpsards" such as the former founder of the French foreign intelligence service DGSE and later Minister of Defense Pierre Guillaumat , Paul Moch and Yves Delavesne . So if you didn't want to “give away” the profits resulting from the oil boom to the international companies Shell, Exxon , BP and Mobil Oil , you had to set up your own oil industry and distribution. For this purpose, a law of 1928 was used, according to which all foreign companies could be obliged to process and sell national oil preferentially. To the disappointment of the international companies and Total, the BRP was commissioned to found a company for refining and distribution.
The Union Générale des Pétroles ( UGP ) was formed from the merger of SN REPAL, RAP and Groupement des Exploitants Petrolièrs ( GAP ), which was supposed to deter the others as little as possible and work without private gain.
The GAP was founded in June 1960 by:
- the SNPA with a 40% share
- the Société des Pétrole d'Afrique-Equatoriale Française (SPAEF) also with a 40% share
- the Compagnie d'Exploration Pétrolière (CEP) with a share of 15%
- the Société de Prospection et d'Exploitation Pétrolière en Alsace (PREPA) with a 5% share
All these large and small companies with state participation were united when the UGP was founded. SNREPAL also brought a stake in Union Industrielle des Pétroles (UIP), based in Paris on Place Vendôme, in UGP, in which UGP now holds 60% and California & Texas Oil Company ( Caltex ) 40% was.
Together with Caltex, UGP owned an obsolete refinery in Ambès ( Gironde department ) with a processing capacity of 1.3 million tonnes per year, 1,385 sales outlets, 183 official filling stations, 4 tankers with 67,500 dwt (dead weight ton) and a small stake in the future one Pipeline Société du Pipe Line du Sud Européen (SPLSE). The SNPA also brought in its small departmental sales organization.
With an annual crude oil volume of 14 million tonnes, a processing capacity of 1.3 million tonnes a year in the obsolete refinery of Ambès was really no cause for satisfaction for the UGP, no matter how much the international companies raised a lot of publicity. Therefore, in 1961, the UGP planned to build a state-of-the-art refinery in the Lyon region .
In 1964 the Feyzin refinery went into operation with an initial capacity of 6,000 tons per year. It was designed from the beginning for the distillation of the Sahara melange and at that time it was one of the most modern refineries in Europe. The Feyzin complex was later enlarged by two direct distillation units, which were connected to a steam cracking unit for the production of 280,000 tons of ethylene per year , in order to be able to supply not only ethylene but also propylene and butadiene - raw materials for the production of plastic materials and other derivatives.
UGP acquired shares in other modern plants and companies in other regions of France, Europe and the rest of the world.
After the takeover of the Antar brand in 1970 (41% for Elf, 24% for CFP and its companies), additional refineries were purchased.
At the end of the 1970s, UGP had 22 refineries.
In December 1965, RAP and BRP were merged to form Entreprise de Recherches et d'Activités Pétrolières ( ERAP ). ERAP managed the SNPA, the Union Générale des Pétroles ( UGP ) and the Union Industrielle des Pétroles ( UIP ) as subsidiaries. For the first time, this organization controlled all stages from the exploration of the reservoir, through the oil and gas production, the refinery to the filling station network .
The establishment of a central French sales company
Since it was founded in 1960, UGP has acquired a number of smaller sales companies:
- La Mure Union with the La Mure brand
- Solydit Union with the Solydit brand
- Gasoline and fuels sold under the AVIA brand
- Compagnie Française de produits pétrolifères (CFPP) with the Caltex brand
It is obvious that with the brands Antar, Caltex, Solydit, ButaFrance, ButaLacq, which have since disappeared, business management was not easy and the product presentation required unnecessary expenditure. That is why the various sales companies were merged under the umbrella of the Union générale de distribution (UGD). There was an urgent need to bring the various brands together under a single, uniform banner.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the other large companies appeared with new slogans, such as “C'est Shell que j'aime” for Shell and “Le Tigre d'Esso” for Esso France. Total opened its night petrol stations. Antar continued to focus on the technical quality of its lubricants. Caltex played the youth card with the distribution of portraits of idols of this era.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Scheld: Petroleum in Alsace. The beginnings of the Pechelbronn oil wells. From Jean Theophile Hoeffel's historical doctoral thesis (1734) to the post-oil era . Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher 2012, ISBN 3-897-35709-7 .
- ↑ Refineries in Reichstett , Alsace with a share of 10%, Albatros Antwerp , Belgium leased with a processing capacity of 800,000 tons per year, Klarenthal (investment), Speyer , built in 1963, Dakar , Senegal (investment), Cagliari , Sardinia (leased), Madagascar , Sianoukville ( Cambodia ) (construction), Grandpuits (commissioned in 1967), Gargenville , Vexin (commissioned in 1968).
- ^ In Herrlisheim , Hauconcourt , Valencienne , Vern-sur-Seiche and Donges .