The strike by oil workers at plants that account for 10 percent of US refining capacity entered its second day yesterday in the biggest walkout since 1980. Crude futures fell.
The United Steelworkers (USW) union that represents employees at more than 200 refineries, terminals, pipelines and chemical plants stopped work on Sunday at nine sites after failing to agree on a renewed labor contract. The union rejected five offers made by Royal Dutch Shell PLC on behalf of companies including ExxonMobil Corp and Chevron Corp since talks began on Jan. 21.
The USW has not called a strike nationally since 1980, when a stoppage lasted three months.
Photo: Reuters
While only one of the nine plants has curbed production amid the stoppage, a full walkout of USW workers would threaten to disrupt as much as 64 percent of US fuel output.
Shell and union officials began negotiations amid the biggest collapse in oil prices since 2008.
“If the strike escalates, that would be detrimental to the oil price,” David Lennox, a resource analyst at Fat Prophets in Sydney, said by telephone. “It will put high US production out on the market and there is nowhere for it to go.”
Photo: Reuters
US benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil fell as much as US$1.57 per barrel, or 3.3 percent, to US$46.67 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It jumped 8.3 percent on Friday last week, the biggest one-day advance since June 2012.
Gasoline for March delivery slid US$0.233 per gallon, or 1.6 percent, to US$1.4555, and the diesel contract for the same month was US$0.189 lower at US$1.6819.
The refineries on strike can produce 1.82 million barrels of fuel per day, data compiled by Bloomberg show. They span the US, from Tesoro Corp’s plants in Martinez, California; Carson, California; and Anacortes, Washington; to Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Catlettsburg complex in Kentucky and three sites in Texas, according to the USW’s statement.
In Texas, Shell’s Deer Park complex, Marathon’s Galveston Bay plant and LyondellBasell Industries NV’s Houston facility have been affected, the union said. LyondellBasell activated its work continuation plan, spokesman George Smalley said on Sunday.
Tesoro will shut down remaining processing units at its Martinez, California, refinery in the next 24 hours, company spokeswoman Destin Singleton said in an e-mailed statement.
The 166,000 barrel-per-day refinery already had about half its capacity offline for planned maintenance, Singleton said.
More refineries are standing by to join the sites on strike, according to two people familiar with the plan who asked not to be identified because the information is not public.
Shell remained “committed to resolving our differences with USW at the negotiating table and hope to resume negotiations as early as possible,” Ray Fisher, a spokesman for The Hague-based company, said by e-mail on Saturday.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US