Refinery lockout could send gas prices higher across New York and New Jersey, union warns

Yeah, I'm with the Teamsters president, Jeff Sanford, here, local 877. Jeff, we appreciate the time. Thanks for joining us this morning. You know, we're going to get into the details about this, but you obviously want, and the union wants what it wants. The refinery obviously wants what it wants. What does this mean for us, those of us who are just going to get gas soon? Are our prices going to go up because of this situation? The refinery and its throughput, I know management will try and continue. If they have any outages in the refinery at this one time, they're at what I call skeleton crew. The price at the pump, I believe, is going to go up. I know our shareholders aren't happy because stock prices went down. Nobody's happy in a work outage like this. Everybody wants to get back to work and get back to their normal lives. You think prices at the pump locally will go up? Yes, yes. And again, in the Northeast. So regionally, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Correct, yeah. We're the largest Northeast refinery. And again, we provide fuel for not only Newark Airport, but the major airports as well. Buckeye Pipeline is a major artery from the refinery that provides finished products, as well as what's behind me, it's domestic trade rack. And you're one of only two refineries in Jersey. And you were telling me earlier that it's not just gasoline that's affected by this. That's correct. We are fortunate in this area to have what's called a polypropylene plant. We manufacture plastics from fossil fuels as well. So this site is one of the only in probably a 500-mile radius that actually produces plastic. But it's medicinal for either household use. So, again, the company is going to continue to try and run these facilities, but they're running them on skeleton crews, and that's our fear. Our fear is for the local community. We have rescue and ERS responders that are outside the refinery. We normally have five different brigades that we rely on. It's about 120 people that aren't in place that can be and respond in a heartbeat. One way or another, we're going to be affected financially by this. Obviously, we want you to get this done so we're not affected. Negotiations continuing this morning? Yes. Yeah, we're supposed to go back to the main table at 10 o'clock this morning, and I'm hoping for a resolution to get this done. sooner the better. But nothing developed overnight that would lead you one way or the other? No, not at all. No. Not at this point, no. We haven't gotten any indication that the company's willing to move. We'll find out at the main table at 10. Jeff Sanford, we appreciate your time. President of the Teamsters Union here at the refinery. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Keep us posted as well on these negotiations. We appreciate it. We'll certainly let you no. That's the latest from Lyndon. Tony Caputo, News 12.