Petrotrin can re­sume ter­mi­na­tion of work­ers this morn­ing af­ter a High Court judge halt­ed the in­junc­tion grant­ed to the Oil­fields’ Work­ers Trade Union hours ago.

Jus­tice of Ap­peal Char­maine Pem­ber­ton blocked the in­junc­tion award­ed by the In­dus­tri­al Court around 11.32 last night and fixed the hear­ing to re­sume be­fore a three-mem­ber pan­el of the Ap­peal Court for Oc­to­ber 18.

Last Tues­day, the In­dus­tri­al Court had grant­ed an in­junc­tion to the OW­TU pro­hibit­ing Petrotrin from mov­ing ahead with the ter­mi­na­tion timetable be­fore the court heard an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions mat­ter the union had raised against the ail­ing state oil com­pa­ny.

Petrotrin had al­ready hand­ed out close to 500 ter­mi­na­tion let­ters to work­ers last week­end ahead of the in­junc­tion but those were ren­dered void pend­ing the out­come of the ap­peal yes­ter­day.

Af­ter hear­ing ar­gu­ments for close to sev­en hours from lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Petrotrin, the OW­TU and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Pem­ber­ton even­tu­al­ly ruled in the com­pa­ny’s favour.

Hours af­ter Tues­day’s rul­ing, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert had told the na­tion that Gov­ern­ment could not af­ford to con­tin­ue to bail out the com­pa­ny, as to do so risked crip­pling the en­tire econ­o­my.

Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet was al­so pub­licly crit­i­cal of the In­dus­tri­al Court's rul­ing and had to be cau­tioned by his lawyers against fur­ther com­ment as he bor­dered on con­tempt of court.

More on this sto­ry lat­er.