Delaware City refinery gets set to hire another round of workers

Herman Seedorf, manager of the Delaware City refinery knew his job Saturday was to hand out cold water to those at Delaware City day, just as the refinery managers before him had.

This time Seedorf had something else to say that those who the plant as Valero or Premcor before him couldn’t offer. His refinery is hiring.

Seedorf says the Delaware City refinery will start hiring 50-60 more people in the next few weeks. That will put the current staffing level of 450 up to the capacity needed to begin full time operations.

Seedorf says there is one more unit that needs to come on line before the refinery is full operational. He doesn’t know when that might happen. “It could be two weeks, it could be 10. We aren’t sure,” he said. He added once that part the refinery is up and running they’ll maintain about 100 contract workers in addition to the 500 the refinery will employ.

Seedorf says it was first Delaware City day and the second one for the refinery that bought the plant from Valero in the 11th hour. Valero wanted to dismantle the plant. Governor Jack Markell and his economic team convinced Valero it was easier to sell the plant as a refinery. P-B-F energy now runs the facility as the Delaware City refinery.

He was happy to hand out water and listen to people talk about their connection to the refinery and welcome him to the area. “This is nice,” he said. “We must have handed out 700 bottles of water with an insulated cover.” There were more cases of water behind him. He said he was happy to be doing it and be a part of the community.