Lagos — Senior Nigerian employees of US oil major Chevron have started strike action this week to protest against job cuts and non-payment of allowances, with the potential to disrupt the company's oil production, union officials said Thursday.
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Register NowA Chevron spokeswoman confirmed the strike that began Tuesday had shut its offices in Lagos and at its operational base in the southern Escravos area. The company was taking steps to ensure there is no disruption to production, she said.
"This is a unilateral industrial action based on inaccurate information," she said.
Chevron's net crude oil production in Nigeria averaged 194,000 b/d in 2018, according to the company's data. It further produced 233 Mcf/d of and 6,000 b/d of LPG.
An official from Nigeria's main oil workers union Pengassan said if Chevron failed to address urgently workers' demands to pay the allowances and end plans to lay off staff, the union will direct members to shut down, and withdraw from, the fields.
"For now the strike is restricted to the offices, but will be extended to operational areas in Escravos in the coming days if management refused to pay," the official said.
Nigeria's two powerful oil unions, Pengassan and its blue-collar counterpart Nupeng, have been at loggerheads with multinational companies over what they call unfair labor practices.
Nigeria's oil production has grown steadily this year thanks to the startup of the 200,000 b/d deepwater Egina field. Nigerian crude output averaged 1.91 million b/d this year, rising to a five-year high, according to Platts estimates.
-- Newsdesk-Nigeria, newsdesk@spglobal.com
-- Edited by James Burgess, newsdesk@spglobal.com