A threatened strike by Nigerian white-collar oil workers got off to a very slow start on Monday and appeared to pose little threat to the country’s production and exports.
The west African nation is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter, and the strike warning had added to the fears of an industry already beset by political crises in Venezuela and the Middle East.
The PENGASSAN oil workers’ union last week warned that industrial action over pay by the staff who supervise the loading of petroleum products at oil terminals could have a ”biting effect” on exports.
On Monday, however, representative for oil giants Shell and ExxonMobil and for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said that their operations were unaffected.
A ChevronTexaco official said that some Nigerian government employees had stayed away from their posts, but that production had not suffered.
Emmanuel Agabir, representative for Nigeria’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources, said: ”They’re not going on strike as at the moment. I think they’re going to hold some discussions.”
But the secretary general of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Kenneth Narebor, said some workers at the oil companies’ administrative headquarters had walked out on strike.
”From the reports I have now, it’s started,” Narebor said. PENGASSAN called strike action for workers from Nigeria’s
Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), who claim that they have still to be paid allowances for 2002 and had received December’s salary a month late.
The workers also want the DPR to be given more autonomy from the government and have rejected an offer from Nigeria’s chief oil official, presidential adviser Rilwanu Lukman, to hold talks on February 25.
The workers oversee the various joint ventures between the NNPC and the oil multinationals which exploit Nigeria’s rich fields, issuing quality certificates and measuring production volume, and it is not yet clear whether they could significantly disrupt production.
Agabir said that he thought a strike would have little effect, in spite of the warnings from the union. And the ChevronTexaco official, who did not want to be named, said senior staff had stepped in to take over the role of striking DPR workers.
World oil prices are at around their highest level in two years amid fears that a US-led attack on Iraq could disrupt Middle East production and as protests against President Hugo Chavez hurt Venezuelan exports.
A representative for Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell, Bisi Ojediran, said: ”There is nothing yet to suggest a strike.”
And Dayo Ojo of US giant ExxonMobil said: ”Our operations are going on, all are producing. The strike is not affecting us.”
NNPC representative Ndu Ughamadu said: ”We have checked with all of our operational bases. All of our staff are on duty.”
Nigeria has recently seen its Opec quota rise to 2 018 000 barrels per day, but claims to have production capacity of around three million. – Sapa-AFP