Aliénor Salin – Manager of Operations Gargenville Oil Facility

In order to support ongoing economic and social activity in France during and after the lockdown, Total took action to produce, convert and distribute fuel to its customers, while making sure to protect its employees from Covid-19. The Gargenville site, in the greater Paris area, is responsible for the storage of 600 m³ of fuel and the production of 100 m3 per hour for the city’s airports and remained so throughout the lockdown, despite the implementation of a number of health measures. We looked back over what the site achieved during this period.

We cut back the maintenance teams to reduce the amount of co-activity as much as possible. Along the the 260-kilometer-long pipeline connecting Le Havre to Grandpuits, we have civil engineering worksites with a lot of people working together, and we were quick to impose precautionary measures and raise awareness about the use of masks, hand sanitizer, gloves, and to protect all the partner companies working on our sites.

Work areas capacity has been reduced, and the offices are disinfected twice a week instead of just once.

We cut the normal staff numbers by a third. We asked everybody with a desk job to work from home to prevent the risk of exposure or contamination. The only people who work on site at the moment are operational staff who maintain the units and the safety of the site itself, because you can’t leave an Upper Threshold Seveso site unstaffed. The security team also remains present around the clock, and we have a pared-down maintenance team.

During the lockdown, there were around 30 people out of the usual 80 working on site under the new safety rules. It was also very important to share best practices.

We have a mutual support system; we keep in touch with other sites. Safety is our priority.