Clock is Ticking on Finding a Buyer for Delaware County Refinery

Todd Vachon / Newsworks.org

Cono­coPhillips offi­cials say their Trainer, Pa. refin­ery will be demol­ished if no buyer is found by the end of March.

WHYY/Newsworks.org reporter Emma Jacobs reports that Cono­coPhillips plans to swing the wreck­ing ball at its sub­ur­ban Philadel­phia facil­ity if no offers are made by the end of March.

“Cono­coPhillips says it will demol­ish its idled oil refin­ery in Trainer, Delaware County, if it fails to find a buyer by the end of March. Union rep­re­sen­ta­tives say they got the word in talks last Thurs­day with the company.”

Both Cono­coPhillips and Sunoco announced in the fall they would shut down their south­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia refiner­ies unless they found a will­ing buyer. Cono­coPhillips gave itself six months from Sep­tem­ber. Sunoco has also idled a facil­ity and says it won’t give up on a poten­tial sale until July.

But politi­cians like Con­gress­man Bob Brady have com­plained that the com­pa­nies aren’t even try­ing. The clo­sures would mean a loss of more than 1200 jobs for the region. Sunoco says they plan to focus resources on the more lucra­tive pipeline busi­ness, tak­ing advan­tage of the expan­sion of shale gas drilling. Cono­coPhillips says needed upgrades to their facil­ity would be too expen­sive. Read more of Emma’s story here.