MORE than a third of workers are set to lose their jobs at one of Britain’s last remaining oil refineries.

Some 134 workers at Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire were told they would be made redundant this morning following a 12-hour night shift.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Essentially, there was a blue eyes, brown eyes — you go this way or you go that way.

“And the workers that went in one direction were told that they were going to be made redundant, literally just before Christmas.”

The government’s official receiver took over the refinery following the collapse of Lindsey’s parent company Prax Group in June.

Unite says that the losses were announced even though there were two bids to operate the site.

“We were told by the government that no decision would be made till October 15, because bids were being looked at to see if the site could be saved,” Ms Graham said.

She warned there could be as many as a thousand cuts in total.

Unite representative Dave Smith said the government “should be stepping in and looking at the fuel security of this country.

“We rely massively on imports, and we’re importing from countries that rely on Russian crude oil.

“We’ve got the North Sea, we’ve got our own refineries. We should be backing British workers and the British economy.”

The Insolvency Service said: “We understand that this is a very difficult time for all those affected by this decision, and [we] will fully support employees subject to redundancy via the redundancy payments service.”