MONTREAL — The fate of Shell Canada’s largest refinery and hundreds of jobs could be decided by Saturday afternoon after the oil giant gave a prospective buyer a deadline to decide if it is willing to enter into final negotiations for the Montreal operation.
A Shell vice-president told the House of Commons committee on Tuesday that the company was willing to re-enter negotiations. The oil giant told a subsidiary of Israel’s Delek Group on Thursday it had 48 hours to come back to the table.
“We have been in this process for well over a year but we’re willing to give Delek one last effort,” Shell spokesman Larry Lalonde said from Calgary.
Shell has been under political pressure to make every effort to save hundreds of jobs by selling the refinery instead of converting it to a distribution terminal.