Dead River to honor Irving Oil contracts

FORT KENT – Officials with Dead River Co. said Friday their company will honor all heating oil and service contracts held by former Irving Oil customers.

Earlier this week it was announced that Irving Oil had sold its home heating fuel business in northern and Down East Maine to Dead River Co., one of its bigger competitors.

“We will absolutely honor those contracts,” Bob Moore, Dead River Co. senior vice president, said from his Portland office Friday afternoon. “That was always part of the deal.”

Sold were Irving’s branch offices in Fort Kent, Caribou, Mars Hill, Houlton, Millinocket, Calais and Machias. Included in the sale were all of Irving Oil’s residential heating oil, propane and kerosene businesses in the affected areas.

When residential and commercial customers signed purchase agreements with Irving, Moore said, Irving bought heating oil and propane based on those amounts.

“We bought that fuel as part of the sale,” Moore said. “For the customers this should be a seamless transition [and] there should not be any problems.”

In addition to the fuel oil and service contracts, existing equipment contracts and loans will be honored, said Moore.

By the end of the week, rumors of mass firings by Dead River following the sale were spreading, and on Friday Moore made it clear his company had not let anyone go.

“Dead River did not give any pink slips out,” he said. “In fact, 75 percent or more of the former employees have been hired [by Dead River Co.]”

The greatest percentage of those rehires, he said, were in the service, technician and trucking areas. Where there was duplication of personnel, such as in the management area, those individuals were not rehired.

“There was an agreement [Dead River Co.] would rehire 75 percent of the workers,” Ned Bulmer, Irving Oil director of business development, said Friday afternoon. “They looked at their needs and who best met those needs.”

Seniority and duplicate services in management played into that decision-making process, Bulmer said.

Those fulltime Irving employees who were not rehired were offered severance packages or other employment opportunities within the company, he said.

In all, Moore said, roughly 50 out of 65 Irving Oil employees were rehired by Dead River Co.

The state attorney general’s office on Thursday gave conditional approval to the sale but imposed a consent decree affecting the propane portion of the business, which was intended to resolve antitrust concerns.

With Irving Oil out of the picture, Dead River Co. would be the sole supplier of wholesale propane.

The consent decree requires:

. Dead River to offer wholesale storage capacity at its Caribou propane bulk facility to Irving and at least one other competing wholesaler.

. Irving to offer to supply Aroostook County propane retailers with their propane needs, in competition with Dead River.

. Irving must sell its bulk storage facility in Presque Isle to a company willing to enter the wholesale propane market.