MOMBASA PETROLEUM WORKERS PROTEST

MOMBASA — Workers at East Africa’s only oil refinery, sited on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast, ended a protest on Wednesday after a meeting was convened to reconsider the possible closure of the plant.

They had earlier barricaded the entrance to the plant over reports that it may be shut due to operational difficulties caused by old and outdated technology.

More than 500 workers and contractors at the Kenya Petroleum Refinery had been joined by residents of the area to press the government to release a report on the plant’s viability that was due to have been completed by the end of last month.

Kenya Petroleum Oil Workers Union coast region secretary Raphael Olala said they stopped the protest after shareholders summoned senior refinery managers to Nairobi for a meeting.

"That meeting had better come up with a palatable decision, because … we will not let this plant be shut down," Mr Olala said.

This was the second such protest after the workers demonstrated last week. "Currently, we are operating with a lot of problems because workers are protesting against an alleged intention to close the refinery," refinery MD Brij Mohan Bansal said earlier.

The union has vowed not to allow the closure of the refinery commissioned 50 years ago. The refinery is run by India’s Essar Energy, which co-owns it with the Kenyan government. Apart from Kenya, it also serves Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fuel distributors have long complained about the quality of products from the refinery in Mombasa, from which Kenyan law obliges them to buy. They want it to close so they can buy cheaper and better imports from refineries of their choice.

Mr Bansal said the refinery typically refines 4,500 metric tonnes of crude per day, but this had fallen to 2,500 tonnes or less due to reduced buying by oil marketers. "We are not able to recover the costs of production," he said.

Essar has said it wants to raise $1.2bn for a substantial overhaul of the plant. But the Energy Regulatory Commission has said the refinery could be converted for a different use, including as a storage facility, if the proposed upgrade will be too costly.

The refinery’s MD said in April that after its upgrade and expansion, it would have the capacity to produce 4-million tonnes of crude per year by 2018 from 1.6-million tonnes now. ERC director for petroleum Linus Gitonga said at a seminar last month that any push to have the refinery closed as "impossible".