Union, Refinery Owners to Resume Contract Negotiations

The United Steelworkers union (USW) and refinery owners were set to resume contract negotiations next week as the largest U.S. refinery strike since 1980 reached its 13th day on Friday.

About 5,400 workers at 11 plants, including nine refineries accounting for 13 percent of U.S. production capacity, were on strike with no signs of an immediate end.

"We're still fulfilling the information request from the USW and looking forward to resuming negotiations next week," said Ray Fisher, spokesman for Shell Oil Co, the U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RYDAF), the lead company negotiator.

Talks are scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

A USW representative was not immediately available on Friday.

On Thursday night, the union said it was awaiting responses to an information request to Shell last week as well as its counterproposal. No details about the counterproposal have been released.

The information request, which Shell has called extensive, focuses on the use of non-union contract workers to perform day-to-day maintenance in refineries.

Workers hired by the companies contracted to do regular refinery maintenance are less qualified than union workers, the USW claims.

Only one refinery, Tesoro Corp's 166,000-barrel-per- day (bpd) plant in Martinez, California, near San Francisco, has been shut due to the strike. Tesoro shut the refinery on Feb. 6, because one-half of the plant's production was already out due a planned multiunit overhaul.

The company said on the Thursday the Martinez plant will remain shut until the strike ends.

Since the talks started on Jan. 21, sticking points have included the use of nonunion contractors and how to monitor worker fatigue. Wage increases and health benefits are also on the table.

The USW is seeking a three-year, industry-wide pact that would cover 30,000 workers at 63 U.S. refineries that together account for two-thirds of domestic capacity.

Over the weekend, walkouts widened to include BP Plc's Whiting,Indiana, refinery and its joint-venture refinery with Husky Energy inToledo, Ohio.

Companies have called on trained temporary replacement workers to keep their plants running at nearly normal levels.

Refineries affected by the strike have reported malfunctions since the walkout began on Feb. 1.

A 70,000-bpd gasoline-producing fluid catalytic cracking unit was shut earlier this week at Shell's 327,000-bpd refinery in the Houston suburb of Deer Park, Texas.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)