Statoil To Ditch Crown Central?

Oil multinational Statoil has told America's Crown Central Petroleum that its contract to refine Statoil crude will not be renewed until normal relationships are established with the trade union at Crown's refinery in Pasadena, Texas.

Statoil has also reportedly informed Crown that no further expansion of business cooperation will be discussed until the US refiner sorts out its disastrous labour relations.

Behind this New Year boost for global labour rights is the Norwegian oil and petrochemical workers' union NOPEF. In solidarity with US oilworkers' union the OCAW, NOPEF pressed Norwegian-based Statoil to help end Crown Central's union-busting in Pasadena.

Crown has kept unionised workers locked out of its Pasadena refinery since February 1996. It launched the lock-out after it had failed to force OCAW members into a strike. The company used trumped-up charges of sabotage to justify the lock-out in its attempt to destroy the union at its Pasadena refinery.

Last August, Statoil signed a two-year agreement for Crown to refine Statoil's crude oil into finished products for the North American market.

The new Statoil threat to ditch Crown is "a highly unusual action by a multinational oil company and further isolates Crown as a corporate outlaw, bully and union-buster on the world scene," said OCAW President Robert Wages. "This should send a strong message to other oil companies not to deal with Crown, and we applaud NOPEF for communicating our concerns to Statoil's management and board."

The news of Statoil's warning to Crown was released by the OCAW, which had been informed by NOPEF.

After a first-hand investigation of Crown's union-busting last September, NOPEF President Lars Myhre declared that "Statoil products should not be tainted by its association with Crown."

"Statoil supplies the American refinery with 35,000 barrels of oil a day," Myhre wrote in NOPEF's magazine last October. "I have been in touch with Statoil and I am going to raise the Crown case with the company again... Statoil must either break off the contract with Crown or use its influence to change the company's ideas for the better, so that the dispute can be resolved decently. Things cannot go on as they are now."

Myhre chairs the energy workers' section of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), to which both NOPEF and the OCAW are affiliated.

Last July, Statoil and the ICEM signed a pioneering global agreement on industrial relations (see ICEM UPDATE 66/1998). Crown Central falls outside the scope of that accord, which applies to Statoil's own operations worldwide. However, the new pressure on Crown will certainly be seen as further proof of Statoil's commitment to union rights worldwide, as set out in the agreement.

In addition to union-busting, Crown stands accused of discriminating against women and African-Americans and of environmental racism for polluting low-income and largely Latino neighbourhoods which surround its Pasadena refinery.

In August, Crown received a 1.1 million US dollar (0.93 million euro) fine from the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. This was the largest air pollution fine in Texas history.

Meanwhile, an OCAW-backed boycott of Crown's US service stations and convenience stores has spread in recent months.

Further proof of the company's isolation is a decision by the American Trading and Production Company, Inc. (Atapco) - Crown's largest stockholder - to relinquish its ownership of Crown stock. Atapco consists of the inherited wealth of Louis and Jacob Blaustein, the founders of Amoco. It filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to separate its holdings into three separate companies and to give its Crown stock to the family of Crown CEO Henry Rosenberg Jr,
which is one of three major branches of the extended Blaustein family, in exchange for the remainder of the Rosenberg family's Atapco holdings.

"Even Crown's largest shareholder has had enough of Henry Rosenberg and is trying to get out of the line of fire," said Wages.

Crown stock has been rocked in recent months, and at times it has dropped to below 7 US dollars (5.92 euro) per share, the lowest in its history. Credit rating agency Moody's has given Crown a negative rating.

Recently, Crown shareholders filed a lawsuit against Crown board members and management for malfeasance and presiding over an 80 percent drop in Crown stock during a decade of unprecedented increases in the US stock market and in the stock of other independent US oil companies. The lawsuit alleges that Crown's management and board have rewarded Henry Rosenberg and his two sons, while ignoring shareholder value.