The union and the company reached an agreement late yesterday to settle the strike, said Pascal Galeote, a representative for the port workers union, Confédération Générale du Travail, known as CGT. A vote in favor of the agreement would end the strike and allow port operations to resume, restoring the flow of supplies to refineries and chemical factories.
``This agreement is a big step,'' Galeote said in a phone interview from Marseille late yesterday.
The strike was started by the CGT over the future of the workforce at a liquefied natural gas terminal that is under construction at Fos by Gaz de France. The company, the owner of Europe's biggest gas network, planned to use its own employees to load and unload LNG tankers at the terminal, which is scheduled to open by the end of this year.
To reach agreement with the union, Gaz de France agreed to hire an as-yet-unspecified number of port workers to load and unload the LNG tankers and perform other port work, said Jerome Chambin, a spokesman for Gaz de France.
``The workers will be employed by the port authority but under the direction of Gaz de France,'' Chambin said in a phone interview.
Gaz de France had said it was necessary for the LNG tankers to be unloaded by its own personnel for safety reasons. Earlier today, both sides reported they were still deadlocked.
Refinery Supplies
The strike, which began March 14, has cost refining and petrochemical companies tens of millions of euros so far and may be boosting gasoline prices in New York.
``It is hard to isolate the effect on oil prices of the Marseille strike from Iran, but the price of refined products has risen more than crude,'' said Frederic Lasserre, head of commodities research at Societe Generale in Paris. ``There is tension in New York in trading on gasoline coming from worries about supplies from refineries in France, Germany and Benelux.''
Four refineries, including two owned by Total SA that depend on crude from Marseille's Fos-Lavera oil terminals, have curbed output and may have to shut next week. That in turn could close petrochemical factories near Marseille, such as one owned by Arkema SA, and in the Rhone Valley, that depend on their products.
Gasoline for April delivery fell 2.4 cents, or 1.1 percent, to settle at $2.1115 a gallon yesterday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices rose 14 percent this month.
