Petrohorror’s nickname was given to him in 2008 when they started to advertise on the Athletic Club shirts in Bilbao. Each year, EUR 2 million was included in the red white budget, six years in a row and all apparently happy, except for the URL0, with the launch of the coke plant in 2013 the years of splendor ended, with the arrival of debts to the oil refinery for two consecutive years. In the opinion of some, this was an investment compensation of EUR 750 million. For others, the presence of a refinery 6,000 kilometers from the oil wells in the current economic system has no future and the crudest proof of this is that 29 refineries have been closed in Europe since 2008 (Deia, 9 July 2017).

The Muskiz refinery has made discreet profits in the last three years, but when the new president, Mr Emiliano López Atxurra, was asked about the evolution of the oil market or prices, the answer was very graphic: “I don’t have a glass ball.”

The economic and official circles repeat the same motto each year: “The one that puts the most money in the public box in the Basque Country,” and they do not tell us that it is also the one that pollutes the most. (2.3 million tonnes of CO2), 35% of the total CAPV). Recently in Bilbao, at an eco-socialist meeting, a Petronor worker said angry: “They pay what the law orders. No more.” And for 50 years now, Muskiz and the surrounding villages have been poisoning every day in exchange for that money. How long?

Petronor's future is inevitably marked by two global and general factors. On the one hand, the oil summit, that is, from now on we will have less oil, more expensive and worse. And on the other hand, the urgency of climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the face of these two factors, the company has two different ways: one, to follow, as before, business as usual, until they know a critical economic situation, ending up in a traumatic closure. In the steel industry and in the marine shipyards we still have fresh examples. Secondly, to take the path of energy transition and industrial reconversion, implementing sustainable ecological criteria, social justice and democratic political pathways.

This second route is not considered to be of interest to Repsol (86%) and Kutxabank (14%), that is, to the owners of the company, since its sole objective is to earn money. But the political institutions? What about political parties and trade unions? Will you expect as spectators the decline of the refinery? Will we give Josu Jon Imaz and Emiliano López Atxurra a crystal ball?