Sept. 23, 2002 – Repair work on the coker complex at the Hovensa refinery is proceeding as expected, a company spokesman said Monday. Meanwhile, one more contractor has secured its own employee liability insurance, and as a result some 35 more workers who had been furloughed on Sept. 13 are back on the job, leaving about 615 still laid off.
Last Thursday, Hovensa announced that its coker operations had been shut down "for the repair of a component that failed" and that repairs were expected to take seven to 10 days.
After more than two years of work, the huge, $600 million coker complex was completed in July and went into operation on Aug 1. The coker allows Hovensa to process a heavier, cheaper grade of crude oil than previously had been possible.
"The repair of the component that failed is proceeding on the schedule that was anticipated," Alex A. Moorhead, Hovensa vice president for government affairs and community relations, said Monday.
He said no employees of the refinery or any of its contractors have been furloughed as the result of the shutdown of the coker complex.
Ten days ago, about 1,045 employees of seven contractors were furloughed because Hovensa had been unable to secure liability insurance to replace coverage with American International Insurance Co. of Puerto Rico that expired at midnight Sept. 12. A total of 11 contractors had been covered by the single policy. Four found insurance on their own through affiliated mainland companies before Sept. 13, and their workers remained on the job.
Employees of Addison Construction, Best Construction, Jacobs-IMC, Longview Inspection, M&M Construction, Triangle Construction and Maintenance, and V.I. Industrial Maintenance Corp. were laid off. According to Moorhead, all except Longview provide mainly maintenance services.
Longview secured its own coverage early last week, enabling its equipment inspectors to go back to work. On Wednesday, Triangle obtained coverage, allowing its 360 employees to return. On Monday, Moorhead said that Best Construction had secured insurance and that its approximately 35 employees had resumed work.
Moorhead said last week that Hovensa would reimburse the contractors for insurance costs that they had not previously been responsible for.
According to figures Moorhead provided last week, the four contractors still without insurance have about 615 employees who remain off the job. Some 450 of them work for Jacobs-IMC.
A class-action lawsuit filed in Territorial Court last week claims that because of a disagreement between the contractor and refinery officials, Hovensa used the insurance situation as an excuse to lay off the Jacobs-IMC employees three weeks in advance of the scheduled end of the company's contract with the refinery. Lee Rohn charged that Hovensa denied the Jacobs-IMC workers some severance pay they were entitled to.
Moorhead said Hovensa's contract with Jacobs expires on Sept. 27 and that Jacobs had given notice to its employees to that effect prior to Sept. 13.
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