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Marathon Corporation has largely been quiet during the strike of the Local 120 Union at the Marathon Refinery in St. Paul Park. Requests for additional information have been ignored up until a recent update to the refinery’s website. When that was discovered, one person from inside the refinery had reached out for comment, but had not returned answers to questions submitted on late Monday morning before the submission of this article on Monday evening.

A MESSAGE FROM AMY MACAK, GENERAL MANAGER, ST. PAUL PARK REFINERY For more than 80 years, the St. Paul Park refinery has reliably produced transportation fuels for our neighbors in the Twin Cities and communities across Minnesota. It’s an honor we hold in the highest regard, and we are committed to operating safely and responsibly – for our community, our people and the environment.

The safety of our employees, contractors, business partners, customers and the community is and always will be our number one priority. Every day, the people who work at our plant do so with the highest commitment to safety and a vigilant focus on care for the environment, and our management team continually reinforces this expectation.

On the evening of January 21, the Teamsters notified us that the 200 refinery employees they represent intended to immediately strike, and they remain on strike. We worked hard to avoid this situation through frequent negotiating sessions with the union, and we remain willing and available to continue meeting. We have negotiated in good faith throughout the bargaining process, and we will continue to do so, guided by our values of integrity and respect. We continue to be committed to reaching an agreement that is satisfactory to all parties.

While we had hoped to avoid this situation, I want to assure you that we are fully prepared for it. In the fall, we undertook a months-long, comprehensive contingency planning process that enables us to continue safely operating the refinery. The men and women currently operating our plant are fully trained and qualified Marathon Petroleum employees. As a team, they have extensive experience with refinery operations, and each individual holds all necessary certifications to run the equipment they’re assigned to, in full compliance with our company standards, which are based on robust industry, state and federal requirements.

Our employees and their families are important to us. Our community is important to us. For 80 years, we have provided many good-paying, local jobs, and we have no plans to change that. We are equally passionate about our community being a safe, thriving place to live and work – we live and work here, too. As part of this commitment, we have a Community Advisory Panel of local leaders that helps ensure we listen to and understand community concerns.

We fully understand and appreciate the significant responsibility we have – as an employer, community member and provider of essential products that help ensure Minnesotans have the goods and services they need. As we have done for many years, we will continue to be a good neighbor and to operate safely and responsibly.

Timing is important.

On a condition of anonymity, a member of the union had reached out regarding what the union calls a ‘hollow commitment to safety’ and to point out some important information regarding the timing of events at the refinery.

The letter above from Refinery Management states they were working for a month, preparing for the strike to happen. Per the source, local management had prepared for the strike to happen effective January 1st, 2021, because the contract expired December 31st, 2020. It did not happen then, the union continued to work until the evening of January 21st, without a contract in place.

Hydrofluoric Acid storage limits

The source stated, “When Marathon bought the St. Paul Park refinery, they did an audit on the Hydrofluoric Acid Unit. That audit resulted in the decision to only have one truckload of hydrofluoric acid (HF) on hand at a time due to the proximity of the community.”

Basically, because of the type of unit in use at the refinery, the abilities of the crew to monitor it properly and the abilities of the refinery to prevent any issues, the best decision for the safety of everyone involved, including the community, was to limit the storage to one truckload. To maintain the needed operational levels, once the holding tank reaches six inches of HF, they order the refill and get the tank as close to zero before refilling it. One truckload of HF brings the tank to roughly four feet.

HF is nasty stuff. If you have the stomach for it, search for it online. But be warned, the images of the burns it can cause and the warnings you will see is very graphic. The explanation of how it causes damage can be much less graphic and still get the point across. A small amount, about what would cover the palm of your hand, is enough to kill an adult. It binds with the calcium and magnesium in your body rendering those ions useless, shutting down organs within hours. That’s where this part of the explanation will end, just trust, it is not something anyone should be exposed to.

Maintaining training standards Marathon training standards require weeks of flow training and tests, then weeks of on-the-job training before allowing the operation of any workstations. According to the source, the replacement workers that are in the refinery currently did not go through the on-the-job training that is part of the Marathon training policies.

The fire department for the refinery is also locked out of the refinery. Industrial and chemical fires require special advanced training to know how to properly combat and ensure not only the safety of the refinery staff, but the community at large. All you have to do is head on over to youtube.com and search for ‘US Oil Refinery Accident’ to see a plethora of recorded videos and USCSB re-enactments with commentary as to what went wrong and what went right. Spend an hour watching those videos and you will understand just how important a properly trained, full time group of industrial firefighters are to the safety of everyone.

The concern with the fire department currently being replacement firefighters is that many of them are not going to the ongoing training sessions.

Why then, did the refinery do one particular thing?

With all that explained, here is where a big question comes into play. Why did management order the Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) tank to be refilled on December 30th when there was still over two feet left in the tank?

Remember, Marathon determined it wanted to keep roughly one truckload of HF on hand at a time for safety, so the reorder depth was six inches, and they try to refill as close to zero as possible, not two feet. That means they had more than one and a half truckloads of HF on site.

Put the pieces together. Allegedly, fear of the best trained people striking within the next 48 hours, allegedly, subpar training of potential replacement workers and factually, one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man needing to be transferred into a tank that will put the tank over its corporate assigned maximum.

Per the source, the thought process amongst the union members was that management wanted the better trained and practiced union guys handling the transfer because it would limit the chance of something going wrong.

There are other sources that were brought to my attention, but due to deadlines, those sources have not been able to be vetted yet, so keep an eye out for an update around that information.

One important piece to note, Senator Karla Bigham, along with Senator Gregory Clausen and Senator Jennifer McEwen have introduced bill SF 634 at the state level. This bill requires any person performing work at high-hazard facilities to have graduated from an approved apprenticeship program, or have documentable, related experience in the field they will be performing at a given site. This bill would require that these outside contractors hired to do work at facilities like the St. Paul Park oil refinery have at least the same experience as required for the apprentice level for the applicable occupation.

This bill could force the hand of Marathon to guarantee that all workers in the refinery in high-hazard positions have the proper training for that position. Given Bigham is the Senator for the Cottage Grove area, you do not need to contact her urging her to support it, but you can give her the ammunition she needs to show her colleagues that the community does support the bill and wants to see it passed as soon as possible. Email Senator Bigham at sen.karla. [email protected]