By Konstantin Rozhnov
CORYTON REFINERY, England--There's 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-barrel-a-day 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 plc (RDSA), Royal Vopak NV 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 U.K.'s fuel market.
(Sarah Kent in London contributed to this article.)
-Write to Konstantin Rozhnov at
konstantin.rozhnov@dowjones.com