France Fuel Shortage: Up to 1,900 Stations Report Petrol or Diesel Shortfalls

Since mid-September 2026, French media and the government's own fuel-price portal have tracked a rolling shortage of petrol and diesel at service stations across the country. The share of stations reporting at least one fuel out of stock has moved up and down from week to week, peaking at 17% around September 21 before easing to roughly 12% by October 4, according to figures cited by franceinfo and the official site prix-carburants.gouv.fr.

How the numbers have moved since mid-September

On September 20, the outlet Upside24 reported that 11% of French service stations were out of petrol or diesel nationally, with some regions as high as 16%; diesel averaged about €2.38 a litre, just under its all-time high. The next day, Economy Minister Roland Lescure told France Inter, as reported by franceinfo, that the share had risen to 17%, adding that strategic fuel stocks were full and refineries running at capacity.

By September 24, the press-aggregation site Titrespresse reported 1,914 stations short of at least one fuel nationwide, with average diesel prices above €2.30 a litre. By October 2, Yahoo France, citing national monitoring data, put the figure at 1,324 of 9,825 listed stations (13.5%) that had recorded a shortage of at least one fuel within the previous 30 days; broken down by product, 927 stations were missing SP98 petrol, 514 were missing E10 and 456 were missing diesel. The French government's own portal showed a lower same-week reading: on October 4 at 9 a.m., 88% of stations nationally reported no difficulty, meaning about 12% had at least one product unavailable, under a methodology that only counts a fuel as 'out' once every variant a station sells is depleted.

Why TotalEnergies stations are most affected

Minister Lescure said 91% of the stations running short belong to TotalEnergies, a consequence of the company's decision to cap pump prices — at €1.99 a litre for unleaded and €2.25 for diesel, according to franceinfo's report of his comments. The capped prices pulled an unusually high volume of customers to TotalEnergies forecourts, overwhelming delivery schedules built for normal demand; weekend resupply limits added to the strain, ici.fr reported.

A second, regional factor compounds the problem in eastern France: low water levels on the Rhine have restricted barge shipments of fuel into Alsace, forcing distributors to reroute supplies by truck and causing delays, according to ici.fr's reporting of comments by Francis Pousse, president of the Mobilians fuel-station federation.

Where the shortage bites hardest

Eastern France, particularly the Grand Est region, has consistently shown the highest shortage rates. The official government portal put Grand Est at 20% of stations short of fuel on October 4, the highest of France's mainland administrative regions, against 0% in Corsica.

• Territoire de Belfort: 7 of 18 listed stations short of fuel (38.9%), the highest share by percentage, per Yahoo France's Oct. 2 data
• Bas-Rhin: 51 of 148 stations short (34.5%) — the highest number of affected stations in absolute terms nationwide
• Haut-Rhin and Vosges: 28.9% of stations each
• Gironde: 41 stations affected; Haute-Garonne and Bouches-du-Rhône: 35 stations each, the next-highest absolute counts after Bas-Rhin

What is still unclear

Sources disagree on the exact scale at any given moment partly because they use different counting methods: some count a station as 'short' once a single fuel grade runs out, while the official portal only does so once every grade a station sells is depleted. Day-to-day totals have therefore ranged from under 1,000 to nearly 1,900 stations depending on the date, the measure used and whether regional or national totals are cited. No source consulted reports a nationwide halt in fuel distribution, and the Economy Minister said as of September 21 that reserves covered the following one to two months of expected demand.