US oil workers’ strike expands to BP plants with talks on hold. The nine US plants on strike and the two refineries headed for a walkout together total about 13% of the country’s refining capacity.
San Francisco/Washington: US oil workers at two BP Plc plants in the Midwest are joining the biggest strike at refineries across the nation since 1980 as negotiations on a new labour contract were suspended until next week.
Workers at BP’s Whiting refinery in Indiana and the Toledo plant in Ohio that it co-owns with Husky Energy Inc. notified management that they’ll be joining the strike at 11:59 pm on Saturday, Scott Dean a spokesman for BP, said by e-mail Friday. The United Steelworkers, which represents 30,000 US oil workers, has suspended negotiations with Royal Dutch Shell Plc, bargaining on behalf of employers, until next week.
The nine US plants on strike and the two refineries headed for a walkout together total about 13% of the country’s refining capacity. It’s the first national strike by US oil workers since 1980, when a work stoppage lasted three months. A full strike of USW members, employed at more than 200 US refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines and chemical plants, would threaten to disrupt 64% of US fuel output. “BP is disappointed that USW leadership decided to call a strike at both the Whiting Refinery and BP-Husky Toledo Refinery,” Dean, based in Warrenville, Illinois, said by e- mail. “We are committed to ensuring a safe and orderly transition as USW employees choose to strike and trained replacement workers take their place.” USW negotiators on Thursday rejected a sixth contract offer from Shell, representing companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., saying the latest proposal showed “minimal movement.”
Bargaining will resume next week as the union waits for data that it requested from Shell, the USW said in a text message distributed to members late Thursday. Talks recess Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague, Netherlands-based Shell, said by e-mail on Friday that talks had “recessed.”
The USW seeks better health-care benefits and measures to prevent fatigue and keep union workers rather than contract employees on the job, USW international president Leo Gerard said in a phone interview from Pittsburgh 2 February. The union began the strike after negotiations with Shell fell apart and workers’ contracts expired on 1 February. The refineries called on to strike can produce 2.36 million barrels of fuel a day, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They span the US, from Tesoro Corp.’s plants in Martinez and Carson, California; and Anacortes, Washington, to Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky, to BP’s refineries in the Midwest. Texas refineries In Texas, Shell’s Deer Park complex, Marathon’s Galveston Bay plant and LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston facility were affected, the union said. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil rose $1.21 on Friday to settle at $51.69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline for March delivery gained 3.43 cents to $1.5591 a gallon.
United Steelworkers members do everything from operating units to performing maintenance to testing and analyzing samples in labs at US refineries. The White House is monitoring the negotiations between USW and Shell and urges the two sides “to resolve their differences using the time-tested process of collective bargaining,” Frank Benenati, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement late Thursday.
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Fuel prices in my area are already creeping back up, locally; about 5 cents in the last couple of days.
Question: How long before producers have to cut production due to lack of available refining capacity and strorage?
Question: How many non-union replacements are available to keep these refineries 'hot'?
