Page 264

264 MINERALS YEARBOOK, 1968 
of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). An additional 2 million tons was supplied
to foreign ships. 
 Refining.—French refineries treated 81.3 million tons of crude and
produced 75.7 million tons of petroleum products. Onethird of the crude processed
in French refineries was from the Franc zone; Middle East countries accounted
for 47 percent, Libya 14 percent, Venezuela 3.3 percent, and the U.S.S.R.
2.2 percent. 
 During the year France's refining capacity increased by 13.5 million tons
to a total of 97.3 million tons. Of this 3.6 million tons resulted from the
startup of the new lie de France refinery and the remainder from additions
to existing refineries which were as follows in million tons of annual capacity:
La Mède 3.8, Feyzin 
4.0, Port-Jérôme 1.2; Berre l'Etang 0.5, and Vern-sur-Seiche
0.2. Before the end of 1970, an additional 16.3 million tons of annual capacity
will be commissioned. 
 The steam cracking unit in the Berre refinery, scheduled for completion
in 1968, went into operation. This is the third similar unit in France installed
to meet increasing requirements of the petrochemical industry. Principal
petrochemical outputs and increase relative to 1967 levels were as follows:
Commodity 
Production 
(thousand 
tons) 
Increase 
relative 
to 1967 
(percent) 
Ethylene               
Propylene              
Butadiene              
520 
330 
88 
50 
25 
40 
Benzene               
154 
55 
 Compagnie Française de Raffinage (CFR) and Compagnie Française
des Pétroles on November 6, formed Total Chimie with 50-percent participation
by each to build and operate large-scale petrochemical plants. CFR entered
into an agreement with the German firms Schoiven Chemie and Chemische Werke
Huis to build a petrochemical plant in Le Havre. This will necessitate addition
of a steam cracking unit to the Gonfreviile refinery. 
 Stocks and Storage.—The Direction des Carburants has imposed a stock
requirement sufficient for 90-day consumption. 
These stocks would include operational and reserve stock. Storage capacity
for petroleum and petroleum products increased almost 4 million cubic meters
during the year to a total of 31,546,000 cubic meters (2.6 times the 1960
capacity) of which 24,924,000 was storage capacity of refineries and 6,622,000
tons was storage of distributors. Byproducts, storage facilities were as
follows in thousand cubic meters: 
crude 7,723, intermediate products 5,534, and finished products 18,739. 
 To reduce cost of building storage tanks, attention is being given to underground
storage and the first underground storage will come into use in July 1969.
The underground storage will be in a salt deposit at Manosque and have 5-million-ton
capacity. For this capacity, the cost at $6 per cubic meter of capacity is
estimated to be half that for surface tanks. 
 This underground storage belongs to a Consortium of Compagnie Française
de Raffinage, Cie de Raffinage Shell Berre, Elf Union and British Petroleum
which formed a joint subsidiary La Société Francaise de Stockage
Géologique (Geostock). Manosque will be connected by a pipeline with
the refineries in Etang le Berre. 
 Transport ation.—T he South European Pipeline (SEP) transported 23,719,000
tons of crude in 1968. Tonages transported by this line declined both in
1967 and 1968 from the 31.1 million ton maximum achieved in 1966. The decline
resulted from operation of the Genoa-Ingolstadt and Trieste-Ingolstadt-Karlsruhe
lines. In 1968, 46 percent of the crude transported by SEP was for France,
44.3 percent for West Germany and 9.7 percent for Switzerland. However, it
is expected that this line will transport large-tonnages (27 million tons)
when the Worth refinery in West Germany and Hautconcourt refinery in France
are put in operation and the Karisruhe and Kiarenthal refineries in West
Germany are expanded. At yearend the product pipeline Mediterranée-Rhône
with 5 million tons annual capacity was put into service. This pipeline will
transport products from the Etang de Berre refinery to Lyon, Grenoble, and
Annecy, and to Geneva in Switzerland. The Le Havre-Paris (Trapil) and the
Grandpuits-Paris pipelines carried 6.7 million tons of product to the Paris
area. The branch line Petit-Couronne-Rouen carried 650,000 tons.