ZAGREB, February 28, 2018 – Environmental Protection and Energy Minister Tomislav Ćorić met with a delegation of union representatives from the INA oil company on Wednesday to discuss the company’s future, notably the future of the Sisak oil refinery.
All 40 workers of the Sisak refinery’s Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) plant will be offered adequate alternative jobs and those who decline it will be offered severance packages, Ćorić told reporters after the meeting.
Responding to a question about the selection of consultants on the buyout of the Hungarian energy group MOL’s stake in INA, Ćorić said they would be selected “in the next two or three weeks, certainly before the end of March.”
Union leader Jasna Pipunić said that the government supported investment in the Rijeka refinery and that the Sisak refinery would be operating until completion of that process. As for the workers of the FCC plant, she said that that was a business decision, announcing a new meeting with the CEO of the Sisak refinery for Friday. She added that they did not expect any of the 40 workers to be fired.
“We have been told that after the closure of the FCC plant the Sisak refinery will no longer refine gasoline but diesel fuel. The closure of the plant is not acceptable to the unions because it means job losses,” Pipunić said.
The management has decided that gasoline will be refined at the Rijeka refinery because it has better equipment, while the Sisak refinery will refine diesel and some other products. The unions will discuss the situation and make decisions at a meeting on Monday, she added.
Workers’ representative Predrag Sekulić said that the dissolution of the FCC plant would be a step towards closing the refinery. He demanded a meeting with “competent people” to show that the Sisak refinery was operating at a profit and to propose new solutions.
