Fearing Russian gas shut-off, France's industry turns to oil

France's energy-intensive companies are speeding up contingency plans and converting their gas boilers to run on oil as they seek to avoid disruption in the event any further reduction in Russian gas supplies leads to power outages. Gathered over the weekend at a business and economics conference in southern France, several top executives said they were preparing for possible blackouts. "What we've done is we've converted our boilers, so they're capable of running on gas or oil, and we can even switch to coal if we need to," said Florent Menegaux, the boss of Michelin, one of the world's leading tyre-makers.