On 25 June 1976, France opened a petrochemical terminal in the Seine Bay, designed to accommodate ships with capacities between 500,000 and 1 million tonnes. This plan was decided in 1969, during a time when the Suez Canal was closed and oil tankers had to travel around Africa. The Antifer terminal, located about twenty kilometers north of Le Havre and south of Étretat, was built with the goal of handling the large oil tankers that were becoming more common. The site was chosen for its geological stability and its proximity to Le Havre, a major port for oil import and storage. The largest oil tanker in the world in 1976, the Batillus, made only 20 visits to Antifer before being retired in 1983. The Batillus, built by the Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire for the Shell Maritime Society, had a deadweight tonnage of 553,662 tonnes and was more than 414 meters long—nearly 85 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower. It was considered the perfect demonstration of the port's capabilities, as it was designed specifically for ships of its size. However, the Suez Canal reopened in June 1975, one year before the terminal’s inauguration, which changed the shipping routes and made the original plan less relevant. The opening of the Suez Canal allowed oil tankers to take a shorter route, reducing the need for the large ships that the Antifer terminal was built to handle. This, combined with the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, led to a sharp decline in the port’s activity. The Batillus was withdrawn from service in 1983, and the terminal saw a dramatic drop in the number of calls, from 219 in 1979 to about forty per year by 1980. The Batillus was eventually scrapped in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 1985. Despite the decline in its original purpose, the Antifer terminal has remained in use and is now the second-largest oil port in France. It handles nearly 20 percent of the crude oil imported into the country, though it now serves smaller vessels. The largest ship to call at Antifer, the Pierre Guillaumat, unloaded 548,248 tonnes of oil in 1978—slightly more than half of the one million tonnes the terminal was originally designed for. Since the 1990s, the terminal has hosted about one to two calls per week, adapting to the changing needs of the maritime industry.