TIRANA, Feb. 4 – Hundreds of Ballsh’s oil refinery workers have turned to protesting to demand four months’ worth of wages and the plant’s functionality again.
Chief of Technical Security Brunilda Jahaj also said the plant has many safety problems and authorities should intervene.
Representatives of the ‘Tosk Energy Company,’ which also manages the plant, have so far made no statements.
The Ballsh Deep Oil Refinery stopped operating in September 2019, leaving more than 700 workers unemployed.
Representatives at the plant linked the disruption to the shortage of crude oil provided by Bankers Petroleum, while unions called for government intervention to resolve the situation.
Bankers Petroleum crude oil company then said in a press release that ‘Tosk Energy Co.’, the company that manages the refinery, “had failed to meet the terms and conditions of the 2019 Crude Oil Sales Contract.”
According to Bankers Petroleum, the parties had agreed that Tosk Energy would guarantee payments through a letter of credit, but as of September last year the letter of credit to continue trading operations between the two companies had not been submitted and BP stopped supplying crude oil to the plant.
The plant’s activity carries the major share of the income of hundreds of families living in Ballsh.
‘Tosk Energy’ was founded in Albania in 2015, with owners covered by a shell company registered in Switzerland.
The management of the Tuscany Power Plant came after the departure of another company called IRTC, which left tens of millions of euros in debt, especially to public institutions and unpaid salaries.
