Trinidad
oil refinery resumes production
AP
Port Spain
Petroleumworld.com
09 24 06
Production at Trinidad's only oil refinery has resumed
after a two-week shutdown caused by worker absenteeism
and repairs to a key unit, a company official said
Wednesday.
Operations
at the state-owned Petrotrin plant restarted Tuesday,
but the refinery was producing only between 20,000
and 26,000 of its normal 160,000 barrels a day of
refined gasoline, diesel and oil, spokesman Arnold
Corneal said.
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Production should reach normal capacity by the weekend,
said Corneal, who declined to say how much money
the company lost as a result of the stoppage, which
began Sept. 6.
The
Oilfields Workers Trade Union and Petrotrin have
wrangled for nine months over worker's pay. The
union wants salary hikes of up to 35 percent, while
the company has offered 10 percent increases over
three years.
Though
Petrotrin had planned routine repairs on the catalytic
cracking unit that powers the refinery and the company
would have stopped production for a few days, the
absences made it unsafe to operate the refinery
and forced the shutdown, Corneal said.
Corneal
could not say if all employees had returned to their
posts but that enough had to put the refinery back
online safely. Errol McLeod, union president general,
said he didn't know how many workers were still
absent.
It
was the second stoppage by workers at the refinery
this year.
AP
20th September, 2006
Copyright
©2006 AP. All Rights Reserved.
