Boston, MA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/28/2012 -- BMI View: French energy policy is subject to change following Francois Hollande's election victory. Nuclear energy in particular is under the spotlight, with suggestions that the existing commitment to nuclear power will be diluted in favour of renewables. During his election campaign, Hollande pledged to close 24 of France's 58 reactors and to cut reliance on atomic power. This leaves the door open for gas to play a larger role. Overall, the future of energy growth is uncertain and the outlook for refiners and fuel distributors remains poor.

The main trends and developments in the French oil & gas sector are:

- A French court has announced a new deadline for the submission of bids for Petroplus' Petit- Couronne refinery, reports Reuters, citing legal representatives for two companies that have placed bids. The new bidding deadline is August 24 2012. The court is scheduled to make a decision on September 4 2012, according to Pascal Defalque, a lawyer for Net Oil, one of the bidding companies.
- Gas demand is expected to rise more quickly than oil demand, with new sources of supply being lined up by GdF Suez, which has signed import agreements with Egypt in addition to those already signed with Russia, Norway, Algeria and the Netherlands. Gas consumption is forecast to reach 51.8bn cubic metres (bcm) in 2016, climbing further to 56.8bcm by 2021, subject to revisions in French energy policy. Gas production is negligible, meaning that imports could rise significantly to a high of around 56.3bcm by the end of our 10-year forecast period, in 2021.
- In May 2011, EdF and Total confirmed that they would proceed with the US$2.2bn Nord-Pasde- Calais Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project at Dunkirk, which is expected to add between 10bcm and 13bcm of import capacity when it comes onstream. There are also plans to expand capacity at the Montoir-de-Bretagne terminal to 16.5bcm by 2014.
- Thanks to improved energy efficiency and efforts to reduce oil dependency, oil demand is now expected to remain mostly flat over our 10-year forecast period to 2021. We forecast oil consumption reaching 1.88mn barrels per day (b/d) by 2016, edging higher to 1.96mn b/d in 2021. Crude oil imports are expected to exceed 1.90mn b/d in 2021.
- Crude oil imports will cost an estimated US$67.7bn in 2012, falling to US$61.9bn in 2016. With virtually no domestic gas supply, we expect French gas imports of 51.2bcm in 2016, costing US$23.8bn. Combined crude oil and gas imports are expected to cost France US$85.6bn by 2016. At the time of writing we assume an OPEC basket oil price for 2012 of US$107.10/bbl, falling to US$99.10/bbl in 2013.The assumptions for 2016 and 2021 are US$93.25 and US$91.50/bbl respectively.

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