The odds are good that most of you have never heard of the Coryton refinery before this week. The site has managed to, in the most unlikely of ways, cause a bit of an international political stir in the last couple of days with its job cuts and potential closure, the idea of which is being protested by a former Russian energy minster. But let’s start at the beginning so that you can get up to speed in no time at all.

The Coryton refinery is described by its parent company, Petroplus Refineries, in the following terms, “The Coryton Refinery is located on a 586 acre site in southeast England, approximately 40 kilometers east of London, on the Thames Estuary. The site was originally commissioned in 1953 by the Vacuum Oil Company, a subsidiary of Mobil, and was purchased by Petroplus in 2007. It is an integrated atmospheric-vacuum distillation, fluid catalytic cracking refinery with a total throughput capacity of 220,000 barrels per day…. Products are distributed primarily in the south east of England and some gasoline and fuel oil; portions are exported outside of the U.K. We typically sell the majority of our output to oil majors, resellers, industry and retail petrol stations.”

Well it looks like the Coryton refinery is getting ready to get rid of its workers, 180 in total, next week in a move that is designed to help the company to work on its fiscal issues. The company is also considering changing the plant over from its current duties to nothing but a storage facility. If that happens then more jobs will be put on the chopping block. On the whole the number of jobs that would be impacted cannot be said with a high degree of certainty, but the facility employs about 900 people currently and should the facility become storage only it is unlikely that the majority of the jobs will be needed by the facility anymore. On the whole the loss of jobs would have a high probability of being more than 800 in total.

For the time being no one knows if, or when that will happen, with members of the international energy community putting pressure on to keep things going it may or may not happen. Only time will tell if the company, which has already been accused of asset stripping practices in the recent past, will decide to shut down this facility or let it stay open at a reduced capacity. All that the workers who are not being cut in this round can do is sit tight and wait to see if they are the next one to be put out of a job, or if they are going to get the axe.

This is, of course, not the only energy company to have fiscal issues. For those of you missed out on our earlier coverage here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed, “Alpha Natural Resources, a coal mining company, is getting ready to lay off about 150 workers as the company ramps down its production…”