French drivers are paying more than ever to fill up, and a TF1 investigation has examined who is benefiting from the historic surge in fuel prices. After first suspecting supermarkets and fuel retailers of padding their margins, the French government's attention has shifted to oil refiners.
Retailers were the first to face scrutiny. When the war in the Middle East began driving prices higher, the government launched a highly publicized campaign of inspections at fuel stations to check whether retailer margins had increased.
Serge Papin, France's minister for small and medium-sized businesses, said in March that every station would eventually be checked. After hundreds of inspections, the government published a document intended to bring transparency to fuel pricing. It showed that retailers' gross margins had not risen at all. In fact, they had fallen by a few centimes.
Refiners face scrutiny
Attention has now turned to refiners. Dominique Schlecher, chief executive of the French retail cooperative Coopérative U, said in early September that refining margins had tripled or even quadrupled, and suggested that was the stage of the supply chain where effort was needed.
TF1 journalists examined the first-half 2026 results of the French oil company TotalEnergies, one of the world's largest energy groups. Its refining division alone earned close to $4 billion in the first six months of the year, nearly five times what it made over the same period a year earlier.
TotalEnergies has denied profiting from the crisis. The company said its decision to cap prices at its own stations had cost it close to 400 million euros in lost revenue.
Is the state the real winner?
Taxes make up roughly half the price of a liter of petrol in France, meaning tax revenue rises automatically as prices climb. That has raised the question of whether those taxes could be cut.
François Lenglet, an economics editorialist for TF1-LCI, said two taxes apply to petrol: excise duties and value-added tax. He said France sits well above the minimum levels required by the European Union on both, meaning it does have room to lower them. But he said the main obstacle is budgetary.
The French finance ministry, known as Bercy, told TF1 that no such reduction is currently under consideration. Officials pointed out that fuel consumption has already fallen by 6%, dragging tax revenue down with it.
