During the soaring fuel prices due to the Middle East war, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced on Tuesday, April 21, a 20 euro cents per liter aid for “modest workers.” The government is also asking fuel industry companies to make an effort. Earlier this week, it was announced that distributors, gas stations, should submit a report to the government on their margins. However, in reality, the state is targeting the wrong thing, according to Manuel Bompard, the coordinator of La France Insoumise. “The problem is not the distribution margins, it is the production and refining margins,” he claims. “These margins have quadrupled since the beginning of the crisis.”
**Fuel: the government asks distributors to present in the coming days “the evolution and calculation of their margins.”
The refiners’ margins have indeed quadrupled since the conflict in the Middle East, according to UFIP figures. The French Union of Petroleum Industries, which calculates the refining cost or gross refining margin, which is the difference between the sale price of refined oil, diesel, and gasoline in particular, that refiners sell to gas stations, and the price at which these refiners purchased crude oil. According to the most recent data, on April 17, 2026, the refiners’ margins averaged 123 euros per ton. Two months earlier, on February 17, before the outbreak of the Middle East war, these margins were 32 euros per ton. They have indeed quadrupled.
**A surge in diesel prices imported to Europe
This is explained, as analyzed by energy specialist economist Thierry Bros, by the soaring prices of fuels imported to Europe, particularly diesel. It should be noted that European refineries, owned by TotalEnergies, Eni, or Shell, do not produce enough diesel to cover all customer needs. It, therefore, needs to be imported. With the war, it was no longer possible to import diesel from the Middle East. European buyers had to turn to other countries, including Asia. As diesel became a scarce resource, these Asian refiners sold it at a higher price. In Europe, it is a market, that of Rotterdam, which sets the prices of oil products, regardless of their origin. The price of diesel from European refineries, therefore, aligned with that from Asian refineries and skyrocketed. So there was a windfall for the refiners.
With these margins, French refiners made super profits, according to a Greenpeace report. During the first three weeks of the conflict, the NGO estimates that French refiners earned nearly 12 million euros in profits each day. France ranks second behind Germany, where refiners made over 24 million euros in profits per day.
