By Tara Patel
Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Workers at the Fos and Lavera oil terminals in the French port of Marseille ended a 12-day strike that had hampered operations at refineries in the region and boosted European gasoil prices.
Work will resume “within hours” after employees approved an agreement “to get out of the crisis” earlier today, the Port of Marseille said in a statement.
The backlog of 61 stranded vessels, including oil tankers and refined-product carriers, will take between 10 days and two weeks to clear, Claire Battedou, a spokeswoman for the port, said by telephone. She declined to provide details of the agreement.
Employees protesting the application of a new law on port operations started a strike on Dec. 4, after rotating walkouts roughly every other day. The legislation calls for workers such as crane operators who are employed by state port authorities to move to the private sector. The Marseille docks, which have a long history of labor strife, have been affected by stoppages in recent years as unions resisted efforts to move jobs to the privately owned companies.
Gasoil for immediate loading in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam- Antwerp area, Europe’s trading hub, climbed 9.5 percent to $492.75 a metric ton at 1:13 p.m. London time, the highest since Dec. 1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Union Francaise des Industries Petrolieres, which represents the French oil industry, has estimated the labor action cost $1.5 million to $2 million a day in reduced refinery operations and delayed vessels.
Refinery Output
Total SA, which operates six refineries in France, said earlier that oil-processing had become “more and more difficult” as the walkout continued. The company’s inventories will last more than a week “but they won’t last forever,” spokesman Michael Crochet-Vourey said by phone from Paris.
Exxon Mobil Corp. also said it had reduced operating rates “significantly” at its Fos refinery as the strike prevented oil deliveries to the plant.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tara Patel in Paris at tpatel2@bloomberg.net
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