Imperial Oil's lubricants and specialty products operation in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada will close by mid-2015 and will impact approximately 60 jobs. The operation, dating back to the Sarnia refinery's beginnings a century ago, blends and packages automotive and industrial oils. The ramp down will begin next year with the operation to be moved to Edmonton.

The decision to shut down the lubricants blending and packaging operation came after the company carried out a study of its competitiveness, Refinery manager Brian Fairley said. "At the conclusion of that we decided we'll be shutting down that operation through 2014 and final by mid-2015 and in no way impacts the rest of the Sarnia manufacturing site," he said. Combined with its research facilities, Imperial Oil's Sarnia complex employs approximately 1,000 people.

Sources say the facilities in the lubricant blending and packaging plant could be demolished in two years which would impact city tax revenues.

Imperial Oil manufactured base oils in Sarnia for the blending and packaging operation until 2010 when it ended that production locally to focus the refinery on making fuels. At that time, the plant had 2,800 barrels per day of API Group I and 3,800 b/d of Group II base oil capacity. In addition, the company determined at that time that the lubes manufacturing plant would come under pressure to close also in the near future.

Fairley said the company is working to find other positions for many of those workers in its refinery and chemical plant operations in Sarnia. "Right now we're not sure if there are any individual job losses," Fairley said. "It's sort of relatively small versus the refinery or chem plant," Fairley said. Most of the workers involved will either be redeployed elsewhere or take retirement

Imperial Oil, 69.6% owned by ExxonMobil, blends and markets a full line of Mobil branded automotive and industrial lubricants.