Nicole Girard

 

At the beginning of the 1960's, the import of crude oil, a plentiful and inexpensive energy, was at full expansion, feeding France's strong economic growth. Since the inter-war years, the port of Marseille has been an important oil port, well-placed on the route between the Middle East and Algeria. The treatment of this heavy, dangerous product, though, cannot be done on the quays of Marseille's port, which anyway are too far from the refineries at Etang de Berre. In 1949 the Chamber of Commerce had decided to build an oil port at the mouth of the Caronte channel, at Lavéra, and this had been operational since 1952. With what was considered at the tiume a large capacity, accessible to oil tankers up to 70,000 tons, the port of Lavéra would quickly be over-taken by the huge increase in traffic, which not only fed crude into the local refineries but also the French north-east, Alsace and southern Germany, using a pipe-line then being built (Société du pipe-line sud-européen).

At the beginning of the 1960's the Chamber of Commerce, who ran the port, undertook a new "conquest of the west", out towards Fos, an extension of the one which, in the 1920's, had linked the Etang de Berre to the port of Marseille. Fos was at first a project instigated by Marseille's businessmen for a port, then it became, as part of the state's policy to improve the region, a major industrial project. The gulf of Fos had several aspects in its favour: it was geographically close to the local industrial complexes, it had easy communication to the rest of France and northern Europe by land, sea and river (the Rhone can be navigated by barges of standard European size and was linked to Port-de-Bouc by a recently enlarged canal.), and above all it has deep water allowing the bigger and bigger tankers to get in (up to 300,000 tons and more). This growth of ship size is linked to the explosion of trans-ocean traffic of primary materials and, for the oil coming from the Middle East, to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956 then its closure after the 6 Day War of 1967, which meant ships had to go round the Cape and thus to be viable, each "supertanker" had to carry much more oil. The plain around Crau had immense potential as an industrial zone capable of receiving heavy industry. As we see in the news report, the new Esso refinery at Fos has already been built, as have storage areas for crude oil. In the 1970's Marseille-Fos was the biggest French platform for liquid hydrocarburant and, via the oil pipes, southern Europe's major oil port. According to the report, the new port of Fos would be operational in 1966. In fact the dredging work had already begun in July 1965, the port welcomed its first ship, the Nivoise, carrying aluminium from Australia, in August 1968: the first 200,000 ton oil tanker followed in December.

A new stage began with the state's decision to make Fos a key part of its policy to improve the whole area with an industrial port zone, like the spectacular ones in northern Europe (Rotterdam and Anvers) and in Japan. The Gaullist regime's policy was being materialised, the DATAR (Délégation à l'aménagement du Territoire et à l'action régionale) was created in 1963 to oversee these major works. The first representative was Olivier Guichard, quoted in this report, a Gaullist stalwart, who set up a specific inter-ministerial work group, the Groupe central de Fos. For many years this would be the pilot of what then became a flag-ship operation to improve the region, in particular by constructing steel works.

 

Bibliography:

Xavier Daumalin, Nicole Girard, Olivier Raveux, Du savon à la puce ; l'industrie marseillaise du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Marseille, Éditions Jeanne Laffitte, 2003.

Didier Cultiaux, "L'aménagement de la Région Fos-Étang de Berre", Notes et Etudes documentaires, Paris, La Documentation Française, n° 4164-4166, 1975.