After 85 years of operation, the refinery which was previously owned by the bankrupt oil firm Petroplus Holdings AG’s, looks set to shut down.

"Unfortunately, the investors have not been able to eliminate all the ambiguities and doubts in the offers. As a consequence, the court had no choice but to reject the offers presented today," works committee lawyer Jean-Pierre Valentin told reporters last Tuesday.

Officials from the Petit-Couronne refinery said in a statement that the company administering the refinery will cease operations of the refinery and that lay-offs of the 470 staff would start "in the coming days".

The refinery in Normandy has been under pressure to find a new owner for more than a year after its Swiss owner Petroplus filed for insolvency in January 2012 after lenders froze credit lines.

Placed under insolvency administration in October 2012, several unions had raised the possibility of nationalization for the Petroplus site in recent months, but the government has said it would only be prepared to take a minority stake alongside a buyer with a firm base in the sector.

In a statement, Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg and Labour Minister Michel Sapin said the government had "taken note" of the court's decision, and vowed to support the staff, while emphasizing that "all possible means" had been exhausted to try to find a buyer and confirmed that the latest ruling would end the search for new owners of the 154,000 bpd facility. The statement added that "nothing could have been worse" than an unsustainable solution.

“It was up to bidders to prove to the court of their ability to offer a new life to Petit-Couronne,” commented Montebourg. “This unfortunately wasn’t the case.”

Although dozens of smaller potential buyers, including Panama-registered and Dubai-based NetOil and Libya's Murzuq Oil had shown interest in buying the plant, the Rouen court found that none of these were able to present sufficient evidence that they had the financial and technical means to “ensure a lasting takeover”. None of the sector's key players, such as ExxonMobil, Total, BP or Shell made offers.

In desperate attempts to find a solid owner, the court had postponed the offer deadline a total of eight times.

Opened in 1929, the Petit-Couronne plant outside Rouen, was sold to Petroplus in early 2008 by Shell and had lost money since its acquisition.

For additional details, please refer to the story Petroplus Halts Refining at Petit Couronne that appeared in the January 9, 2012 issue of the OEM/Lube News.

The Petit Couronne refinery contains a lube base oil plant which has a capacity to produce 7,300 barrels per day base oils, of which 6,300 b/d is API Group I capacity and 1,000 b/d Group III capacity.

The plant continued to produce base oils for Shell since June 2012 under a so-called tolling deal with Shell but Shell announced in December it decided not to extend the six month toll processing contract at the Petit-Couronne plant.