Full closure planned for Petroplus refinery in UK
By KONSTANTIN ROZHNOV
CORYTON, England – There is no credible bid for Petroplus Holdings AG''s Coryton refinery in England to operate it as a refinery, and the first 180 redundancies are planned by the end of next week, the chairman of Unite labor union at Coryton said Monday.
Approximately 100 more jobs will be cut in July, with the rest by September, said Unite''s Russell Jackson.
The 220,000 bpd facility employs around 500 permanent workers.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrator of Petroplus''s UK subsidiaries, wasn''t immediately available to comment.
There is a high possibility a deal to turn Coryton into a terminal will be struck, Mr. Jackson said.
Royal Dutch Shell, Royal Vopak and Greenergy Ltd. are the main joint bidder to turn Coryton into a terminal, and Shell is the major party in the bid at this stage, Mr. Jackson said.
Vopak and Greenergy were not immediately available to comment, while Shell declined to comment.
The terminal bid is of a greater value than the refinery bids the administrator had, said Mr. Jackson who worked at the refinery for 29 years.
Before Petroplus lost access to all its credit lines and then filed for insolvency in January, Coryton was supplying around 10% of the UK’s fuel market.
Dow Jones Newswires
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