{"id":5601,"date":"2015-02-12T07:10:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T12:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5601"},"modified":"2015-02-12T07:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T12:10:24","slug":"oil-searching-for-a-bottom-as-union-threatens-more-walkouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5601","title":{"rendered":"Oil Searching For A Bottom As Union Threatens More Walkouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/oilprice.com\/Energy\/Crude-Oil\/Oil-Searching-For-A-Bottom-As-Union-Threatens-More-Walkouts.html\" target=\"_blank\">Oil Searching For A Bottom As Union Threatens More Walkouts<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The strike at US refineries got a bit bigger over the weekend \u2013 all amid the most<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-02-05\/most-volatile-oil-market-since-09-seen-persisting-on-oversupply\">volatile<\/a>, and now downward, price swings seen in the last six years. Investors have yet to lose hope in a sustainable rebound, but another prolonged fall may be looming ahead.<\/p>\n<p>The United Steelworkers union (USW) and Royal Dutch Shell \u2013 big oil\u2019s lead representative in the matter \u2013 failed to reach an agreement on wages, safety measures, and benefits last week. As a result, 1,400 workers at two BP-owned refineries\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.argusmedia.com\/News\/Article?id=989520\">joined<\/a>\u00a0the work stoppage on February 8. Since the beginning of the month, USW members have walked out of 11 refineries, leaving approximately 1.82 million barrels per day of refining capacity in the hands of retirees and last-minute, non-union replacement workers.<\/p>\n<p>Still in its early stages, the strike has room to grow. The USW national contract \u2013 which expired February 1 \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2015\/02\/08\/news\/companies\/oil-refinery-strike\/\">covers<\/a>\u00a0nearly 30,000 workers, 65 facilities, and around two-thirds of the nation\u2019s refining capacity. The nature of the negotiations remains unclear, but the sides appear to be far apart. The union has already\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/r-shell-us-oil-workers-to-talk-more-on-fourth-day-of-refineries-strike-2015-2\">rejected<\/a>\u00a0five offers from Shell and threatened further walkouts if progress is not made.<\/p>\n<p>To date, contingency plans and local bargaining have limited any drop in output \u2013 positive pressure on both crude and gasoline prices has been virtually non-existent. Instead, downward pressure caused by the work stoppage has only increased the recent volatility, muddying any understanding of the true bottom. The last strike, in 1980, lasted three months.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oil Searching For A Bottom As Union Threatens More Walkouts The strike at US refineries got a bit bigger over the weekend \u2013 all amid the mostvolatile, and now downward, price swings seen in the last six years. Investors have yet to lose hope in a sustainable rebound, but another prolonged fall may be looming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[592,1775,3022,3131,3239,3133,3466,3465],"class_list":["post-5601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-oil-price","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-royal-dutch-shell","tag-strikes","tag-unions","tag-united-steelworkers","tag-us-refineries","tag-walkouts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5602,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5601\/revisions\/5602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}