Marcus Hook Borough is between a rock and a hard place.
Or, more succinctly, as our front page indicated on Sunday: Over a barrel.
The borough is concerned about the future of the Sunoco refinery that for a century has been the town’s icon. The company has made it clear they plan to get out of the refining business. It does not appear as if a buyer is going to step forward to operate the site as a refinery, which would keep a lot of union jobs.
The borough is considering a zoning change that would limit what the company can do at the site, in particular restricting the storage of petroleum products at the site to those actually manufactured there.
There is a belief among many in the borough, as well as union folks, who suspect that the company is not all that interested in selling the facility to another refinery, that they would much rather keep the pieces they want and sell off the rest.
This zoning change obviously would put a major kink in those plans.
As you might expect, Sunoco is not especially enamored with this plan.
Ironically, the new CEO of Sunoco paid a visit to the borough Wednesday afternoon to talk about the plant, and let the borough know the company did not think the zoning change was a good idea.
Oh, and one other thing. Sunoco would be willing to help out the borough with their budget crunch that would coinincide with the refinery’s shutdown.
Yep, it’s a dilemma alright.
You can read the entire story by reporter Kathleen Carey here.
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