SA: Job losses from Mobil Port Stanvac closure could rise: union

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SA: Job losses from Mobil Port Stanvac closure could rise: union

ADELAIDE, April 9 AAP - The loss of 400 jobs at Adelaide's Port Stanvac oil refinerycould snowball to 1,200 jobs across South Australia, a senior union official warned today.

Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union national secretary Doug Cameron said with thenormal flow-on effects, the higher figure was a real possibility.

He also called on the federal government to convene an urgent summit with the stategovernment, union and the Mobil company to look into ways of keeping the facility open.

Yesterday Mobil said it would close Port Stanvac because it could no longer sustainthe plant's losses.

However, it said it would mothball the facility with the hope of reopening it towardsthe end of the decade.

Mr Cameron said that suggested there might still be some hope for the refinery to remaina viable concern.

"Mobil are now talking about this bizarre approach of mothball and if they can thinkabout mothballing and opening it up again there must be an opportunity to keep the plantopen," he told ABC Radio.

SA Treasurer Kevin Foley said Mobil had a responsibility to "clean up that site, dismantlethat plant and return that to the state of South Australia".

"We want them to own up to that responsibility," he told reporters today.

"Our options available at present are extremely limited, the legal options availableto us now are minimal.

"I want to have serious discussions with the company, I want to see whether or notthey are serious about this mothballing concept or whether there are other agendas thatare at play here."

AAP scl/sl/pw/de

KEYWORD: MOBIL NIGHTLEAD