French President Emmanuel Macron secured commitments for an extra 200,000 tonnes of diesel a month from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, the Elysee Palace said on Tuesday, before the president landed in Qatar on a three day Gulf tour that also stops in Kuwait. The UAE committed about 100,000 tonnes a month, with a further 100,000 tonnes monthly to be secured during Macron’s visit to Bahrain. Together with deliveries from Saudi Arabia, France now has commitments for 295,000 tonnes a month, just over 10 percent of its consumption, the presidency said. Kuwait also gave what the presidency called very clear commitments to deliver diesel and kerosene to the French overseas territories of Mayotte and Reunion in the Indian Ocean, with shipments routed via Oman to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
The tour follows a weekend of violent protests in France over the soaring cost of living, with the US Iran war keeping energy prices high eight months in. Diesel has been among the hardest hit products. TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne, who is travelling with Macron, told AFP the deals would reassure the French, adding: “We are not going to run out of diesel in February.” The G7, chaired this year by France, agreed earlier in October to draw up to 100 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves, and France has released 10 million barrels of diesel from its own reserves, aiming to cut prices by 12 to 18 cents a litre, about 5 to 8 percent, from next month. Markets judged the IEA’s accelerated reserve release of just over 20 million barrels of diesel last week as an acceleration of existing commitments rather than new volumes.
Analysts read the bilateral push as a structural shift. King’s College London professor Andreas Krieg told Al Jazeera that Gulf states have sent delegations to London, Paris, Berlin and Rome in recent months seeking access to military complexes and stakes in European defence companies, and that both sides feel pressure from a United States increasingly sidelining them. The IEA’s October Oil Market Report estimated September global diesel exports were about 700,000 barrels a day below their year earlier level, with losses from Russia and the Middle East exceeding gains elsewhere, and warned the supply crunch is likely to extend well into 2027.