Strikes end at Total refineries

Strikes ended at Total’s refineries in France over the Christmas period. Workers at the Gonfreville refinery agreed to end their strike on Friday 27^th December, the last of five sites to halt a walkout that had begun two weeks previously.

Striking staff, led by the CGT union, had been locked in a pay dispute with Total, which has refused to reopen talks after other unions approved a deal in December.

Strike action has undermined Brent oil prices and provided support to European diesel differentials and gasoline cracks.

‘It will take a few days to have the refineries back to normal operating levels and overall we estimate that France will have lost about 5.1 million bbls of distillates and 2.5 million bbls of gasoline production during those strikes’, said Olivier Jakib, managing director of Petromatrix GmbH.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/03012014/total_strikes_end07/