TIRANA, Dec. 28 – Hundreds of oil workers at the Ballsh oil refiner marched for about 140 km to Tirana this week to protest unpaid wages and demand the resumption of work at the country’s largest oil refiner, the top employer in the southern Mallakastra municipality.
“We are marching because we are out of work. We worked in November, but weren’t paid. We want our money back. We have spoken up several times, but nobody cared. Everybody is celebrating the New Year, we can’t even afford making ends meet,” one of the 200 protesters was quoted as saying by the Reporter portal.
Work at the Ballsh oil refiner resumed in late 2016 following a deal between Bankers Petroleum, the country’s largest oil producer, and an offshore company that envisaged Bankers could sell up to 65 percent of its crude oil production from October 2016 to December 2017.
The late August 2016 deal with Ionian Refining and Trading Co. – IRTC SH.A., a newly established offshore at the British Virgin Islands and also registered as a joint stock company with Albania’s National Business Center, was made just before Chinese investors fully acquired Bankers Petroleum for C$575 million (€392 mln).
The deal reactivated the bankrupt ARMO oil refiner which had left hundreds of workers jobless since more than a year in its Fier and Ballsh refineries.
The Ballsh refiner employs some 1,200 workers and is the main employer in the poor Mallakastra municipality of some 27,000 residents.
IRTC claimed Bankers Petroleum prefers selling crude oil to international markets rather than supplying the domestic industry, but the country’s largest oil producer said it had been forced to sell crude oil abroad at lower prices following IRTC’s failure to pay and guarantee payments for 2018.
Kamber Iljazi, the head of Oil Workers Trade Union says oil workers are determined to continue their protests until a solution is given.
“When we reach Tirana, we will focus in front of the Prime Minister’s office and the Energy Ministry with our financial demands. We will never give up. We will continue protesting with all the democratic instruments the country’s Constitution guarantees us,” Iljazi is quoted as saying.
The reactivation of domestic oil refining in late 2016 has significantly reduced reliance on fuel imports this year but slowed down oil exports as international oil prices have significantly picked up following a 12-year low of $30 a barrel in early 2016.
Finance ministry data shows oil imports in the first ten months of this year dropped by a sharp 23 percent to 325,287 metric tons as domestic refining is estimated to have met about a quarter of the country’s needs.
ARMO, whose 15 percent stake is still held by the Albanian government, has been in financial trouble for several years now following a failed 2008 privatization.
ARMO’s assets include two refineries in Ballsh and Fier and one thermal power plant, built in the 1970s under communism.
