PARIS – French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to keep gasoline flowing in France, deploying police to prevent protesters from interrupting the fuel supply, Bloomberg reports.

“I have ordered blockades to be lifted at all fuel depots so we can get back to normal,” Sarkozy said yesterday. “If they don’t end soon, this chaos could paralyze the country and affect jobs as well as hurting economic activity.”

Police dismantled blockades at three depots in western France yesterday morning, as workers at France's 11 active oil refineries enter the second week of a labor strike. A government spokesperson said roughly 40 percent of 12,000 service stations are running low on supplies.

Jean-Louis Schilansky, head of the refiners’ group, Union Francaise des Industries Petroliers, said French oil companies would share supplies and transport to combat shortages, though he conceded it would take several days to replenish supplies.

“We have the products in the depots; we just can’t get them to where they’re needed,” he said. “By sharing our stock and our means of transport we have greater flexibility.”

Police estimated that more than one million protesters marched in over 250 demonstrations across France earlier this week, up roughly 20 percent from the last national strike on October 12.

This week's strike is the country's fourth in two months against the pension bill, which raises the minimum retirement age in France by two years to 62, with a full pension realized at age 67. The bill has passed France's lower house of parliament (National Assembly) and has yet to be taken up by the Senate, though a vote there could take place as soon as this evening.

“We’ve had six days of protests and we’ll do a seventh and an eighth if we have to,” said Bernard Thibault, secretary general of the CGT union.

Sarkozy maintained the retirement revision is needed to balance the country's pension system by 2018, part of a larger effort to reduce the overall deficit, which currently stands at 7.7 percent of gross domestic product.