Petro-Canada refinery operational despite lock-out

20 February 2008 16:42  [Source: ICIS news]

TORONTO (ICIS news)--Petro-Canada management staff have kept operating the company’s 130,000 bbl/day refinery in Montreal at normal rates even as a three-month lock-out of unionised workers there remains unresolved, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.

 

The spokesman, who declined to be named, said he could not say when the dispute would end.

 

The 140 Petro-Canada management staff running the plant were working 80 hours or more per week and were not properly trained, raising safety issues, said a spokesman for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, which represented the locked out workers.

 

Petro-Canada locked out some 260 unionised workers in November after negotiations over a new contract failed.

 

The refinery supplies feedstock to Petro-Canada’s Parachem paraxylene (PX) plant and the Petromont ethylene facility.

 

Workers at the ParaChem facility were not locked out and the facility seemed to operate normally, added the unnamed union spokesman.

 

Parachem is a joint venture of Petro-Canada and Quebec's provincial finance agency SGF.

 

Petromont, a joint venture of Dow Chemical and SGF, said earlier this month it planned to mothball its ethylene and polyethylene (PE) plants in Montreal on 30 April due to high feedstock costs and the strong Canadian dollar.

By: Stefan Baumgarten
+1 713 525 2653

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