Four major refineries were put on the shutdown mode late Tuesday after the petroleum ministry failed to dissuade the Oil Sector Officers Association (OSOA) from going on an indefinite strike from Wednesday for better wages and perquisites.

OSOA officials said that the cooling-down process had started in Indian Oil Corp’s Haldia, Baroda, Panipat and Mathura refineries while the Koyali unit was slated to go down from midnight. However, IOC director (refineries) BN Bankapur countered that all his refineries were operating at “full capacity”.

The refineries shutdown would hit northern India very hard, though after a lag, as its supply of petroleum products largely come from Panipat and Mathura units. Refineries process crude oil into aviation fuel, LPG, kerosene, petrol and diesel, among others.

The shutdown started after the OSOA rejected petroleum minister Murli Deora’s appeal for deferring the strike by a month, during which he promised that the wage issue would be resolved. However, OSOA president Amit Kumar said that the association had spurned Deora’s offer as it had “lost faith in the wake of false promises dished out to us repeatedly”.

“On several occasions in the past, OSOA deferred its agitation call on assurances of the ministers of petroleum and Department of Public Enterprises (Santosh Mohan Deb), but these two have always gone back on their promises,” said an OSOA statement.

The ministry upped the ante on Tuesday forcing the heads of oil and gas PSUs to threaten striking workers with dismissal. “We would also like to make it clear that we will be constrained to take severe disciplinary administrative and legal action, including dismissal from service against anyone instigating, causing or going on strike,” said a joint communiqué by the PSU chiefs.

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