(Adds administrator comment)
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 administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers and 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.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrator of Petroplus's U.K.
subsidiaries, confirmed Monday in a statement that around 180 staff
will be made redundant next week, adding that "there would likely
be a substantial number of redundancies from the 500
workforce."
PWC said: "Following cessation of refining activities last week,
the program to safely wind down operations at the refinery
continues."
It is highly unlikely Coryton will be sold as a refinery, but
talks with "various parties who have expressed an interest in
acquiring the Coryton site" continue, PWC said.
There is a high possibility a deal to turn the
220,000-barrel-a-day facility 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 was not immediately available to comment on the issue,
while Greenergy and 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