Reuters) – Nigeria’s senior oil workers’ union said on Friday it was suspending all strike action at the local unit of U.S. energy giant Chevron after reaching agreement in a labour dispute with the firm.
“All industrial action has been suspended,” Mustapha Nuhu Wali, deputy national president of the PENGASSAN union, told Reuters at the end of two-day talks with the government and Chevron management.
Union workers had staged a partial strike at Chevron this week, stopping administrative staff from getting to their offices in the main commercial city Lagos, but output has not been affected.
Some union members warned of an all-out strike if talks had failed this week, potentially cutting output sharply in the world’s eighth largest exporter.
Chevron’s output from Nigeria is around 350,000 barrels per day, of which its equity share is around 129,000 bpd.
The Nigerian government brokered the deal, after talks between the two sides collapsed last week and the oil ministry was forced to intervene at the last minute.
The OPEC producer wants to avoid a further hit on its output. Militant attacks have shut a fifth of the country’s output since early 2006, helping push world oil prices to record highs.
EXPAT CONCERNS
The Chevron branch of PENGASSAN has been demanding the transfer of the expatriate managing director from Nigeria, accusing him of violating safety standards, having too many foreign staff and a lack of respect for Nigerian workers.
“We have agreed with the Chevron management that with government intervention we will form a committee to look at all of the problems with the intention of closing the issue in a month,” Nuhu Wali said.
State-oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. agreed to communicate the union’s concerns to Chevron’s main headquarters in San Ramon, California.
The union said Chevron agreed to review its expatriate positions in Nigeria to see whether more positions could be made available to locals.
The company has more than 2,000 workers in Nigeria, of which 90 percent are Nigerian, according to its website.