Prospects bleak for refinery sale: analyst
Posted May 18, 2012 06:37:12 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Members of the energy industry are weighing in on the options facing the Dartmouth refinery, and the prospects don’t sound good.
Imperial Oil has announced it is looking for buyers for the aging facility, and is also considering converting it to a terminal.
Roger McKnight, senior petroleum analyst with EnPro International, says the company won’t find many interested buyers.
“I think it’ll be boxed up, just like Petro-Canada did for their Oakville refinery,” he said. “They put it in a big box and sent it to India.”
He said the Imperial Oil refinery is too old to compete effectively with others in the market.
“It can’t compete against Irving, who have one of the best refineries in the world, by the way,” he said. “And it can’t compete with Ultramar. I think they’re just a minor player in the bigger picture.”
The executive director of the Maritimes Energy Association is more optimistic some of the 200 full-time jobs at the refinery could be saved.
“The first priority is to see whether there’s a buyer for the refinery,” she said. “Then they’d look at it as a terminal, which does require some people, it does require some contracts.”
Andrew Younger, Liberal Energy Critic and MLA for Dartmouth East, says a recent tax break for the refinery was a mistake.
“I think today we’ve learned that that tax break had no guarantees to it,” he said. “The challenge with selling it now, is that there’s no guarantee that it wouldn’t be sold, packed up on a ship and sent overseas somewhere.”
He says he wants those jobs to stay in HRM.
“We just have to see if we can find the best option for the people that work there and also for the region,” he said.
Imperial Oil says it hopes to make a final decision on the future of the Dartmouth refinery in the first quarter of next year.
