Member Article

UK’s largest oil refinery cuts jobs

About 150 members of staff at Coryton Oil Refinery in Essex will lose their jobs next week as redundancies are announced.

The future of the refinery, which currently supplies around 20 per cent of fuel for London and South East England has been in doubt since the start of the year when Petroplus, Coryton’s Swiss-based parent company, became insolvent.

It was decided during a town hall meeting at the site that around 150 workers will be laid off in the first round of redundancies. A reuters source has said that more jobs will be cut in July.

The Labour Party and union leaders have tried to encourage ministers to use state aid in order to save the plant from closure. The Government has said it will not apply to Europe for help as a decline in demand for petrol makes it unviable . The closing down of Coryton will mean a higher dependency on foreign fuel imports.

Despite being in talks with 100 possible investors and purchasers last month, the administrator said there was no way of keeping Coryton Oil Refinery open. It is thought that, if sold, the refinery would be sold for another purpose though it is still likely to mean job losses.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Francesca Dent .