Terry Roberts · CBC News · Posted: Nov 03, 2019 7:00 AM NT | Last Updated: 11 hours ago Julia Peddle works in the health, safety and environment department at the Come By Chance oil refinery in Placentia Bay. She is pictured here displaying a bottle of Hibernia crude. (Terry Roberts/CBC) After many dark years, an oil refinery in Newfoundland and Labrador is not only "swimming on top" but bucking a trend that has hurt some competitors, says the outgoing CEO of North Atlantic Refining Limited. While some refineries on the east coast of North America have struggled, the situation is increasingly upbeat at North Atlantic Refining. "What I leave behind is a company that is set really toward a very prosperous and successful future because we have stabilized the operation," Thomas Jenke said during an interview at the Come By Chance refinery in Placentia Bay. The upbeat tone represents a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a facility with a checkered past — five different owners, an extended closure and a political scandal at the outset — since it opened in the 1970s. "We are coming from what we call a basket case refinery to become a refinery of […]