MOSCOW (MRC) -- The United Steelworkers union (USW) on Thursday modified its contract proposal to ExxonMobil in a bid to end an eight-month lockout of about 600 workers at the company’s Beaumont, Texas, refinery, reported Reuters with reference to a union official's statement.
The sides held their first negotiating session since late October, meeting for about an hour on Thursday morning, said Bryan Gross, USW international representative.
"We made a few modifications around holiday pay and a few other items to match other ExxonMobil contracts at the Baytown (Texas) and Baton Rouge (Louisiana) refineries," Gross said. He said the proposal modifications were not concessions.
The two sides were awaiting results from a US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised decertification vote on whether to remove the union from the plant.
The company has said it would end the lockout when an agreement is reached or when the union is removed through decertification.
Exxon has kept operating the 369,000-bpd refinery and oil-blending facility using supervisors, managers and temporary operators. The facility produces gasoline and Mobil 1 motor oil.
On Dec. 29, the NLRB said it impounded ballots in the decertification vote while it investigates the union's complaints of unfair labor practices against Exxon. Results may not be known for several weeks, a NLRB spokeswoman said.
The federal board is reviewing union charges that the months-long lockout was intended to break the union at the plant and that Exxon improperly aided a union-removal campaign. Exxon has denied the allegations.
As MRC informed before, ExxonMobil said on Dec. 27, its Baytown, Texas, refinery continued to operate at reduced rates following a fire on Dec. 23, and that the unit involved remained shut down. The company has not yet determined the cause of the fire, but said it was continuing to empty the unit so it could safely enter the facility and assess what impact it would have on production. A filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the fire occurred at the facility's hydro desulfurization unit 1.
Exxon's Baytown facility is home to a chemical plant, an olefins plant and the country's fourth-biggest oil refinery, with capacity to process 560,500 bpd of crude.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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