Most certainly the indebtedness of Samir and its financial situation prevents the government from intervening in its restart. The National Syndicate of Petroleum and Gas Industries (CDT) is hardly mistaken regarding it and, returns to the attack to assert its claims.
Against the backdrop, the company has been bankrupt since 2014, due to its inability to repay its debts to several institutions, including the Customs and Indirect Tax Administration (ADII), to which it owes no less than 13 billion dirhams. The debt amounting to 3.7 billion dollars. So far, no solution has emerged, the Executive seems to be waiting for the judgment of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) regarding the dispute between Morocco and the subsidiary of the Coral Holding Company , which had requested arbitration from the World Bank Centre.
In the Kingdom, the Commercial Court of Casablanca (TCC) is responsible for the judicial liquidation procedure, the decision of which was pronounced on 1is June 2016. The TCC has still not managed to find a possible buyer knowing that an attempt to rent the storage bins to the Moroccan State had failed in November 2021. This cost us a strategic stock that we might have constituted thanks to the very low price of hydrocarbons at the time.
For lack of buyers and/or nationalization, the site is slowly dying, pending the ICSID decision. It must be said that the shutdown and the compulsory liquidation of the Samir refinery, greatly contributed to the international cabotage activity of refined hydrocarbons (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, fuel oil).
Also voices are increasingly heard for the restart of the refinery such as those of the National Front for the Safeguarding of the Samir Refinery (FNSS) and especially the National Union of Petroleum and Gas Industries (CDT). They highlight the positive effects they might have given the persistence of fuel prices at very high levels.
The Syndicat national des Industries du Pétrole et du Gaz has indicated that the “Samir” products will have significant impacts on increasing national reserves by at least 60 days while helping to reduce prices and ensure quality control. , not to mention the saving of hard currency wasted on refined materials whose supply is much less than the demand on the international market instead of crude oil.
It is in this sense that the unions have called on the government to reopen the Samir, which would consequently reduce the expenses linked to the international prices of refined oil and would even generate profits thanks to the oil refining process.
To do this, the unions indicate that the restoration and other repairs necessary for the reopening of Samir would require a reasonable period of eight months and a budget of less than two billion dirhams, knowing that Samir’s total debt revolves around 44 billion dirhams (double according to the unions).
Samir might then make a gross annual profit of 10 billion dirhams and a net profit of 5 billion dirhams, with recovery of the amount of the fixed price in 4 years and covering the expenses of restoration from the first year of operation. Resuming oil refining at the Samir company means benefiting the national economy from the gains of this industry and in this period of strong turmoil on the oil and gas market, they are good to take. Samir has been shut down for eight years due to mounting debt under its former owner, Saudi-Ethiopian businessman Mohammed Hussein Ali Al-Amoudi
The CDT, which participates in social dialogue, had denounced the negative impact of the pandemic and high prices on the purchasing power of citizens, calling for an increase in the wages of all workers in the private and public sectors.
Also in its claim bag, compensation for the damage caused by inflation, high prices and chaos as well as the institutionalization of social dialogue are the most important conditions for the success of the dialogue. She called for the protection and preservation of the gains of the working class in the oil and gas sector, from La Samir.
