Senior staff working for US energy giant ExxonMobil in Nigeria have threatened to go on strike unless the management agrees to their demand for a pay rise, company and union officials said.
“We gave the management a seven-day notice with effect from last Friday (May 12) to review our remunerations or they will be faced with an industrial action that will paralyze the company’s operations,” a spokesman for senior staff association PENGASSAN told AFP.
A spokesman for the company confirmed the strike warning and said ExxonMobil was in talks with the workers to avert industrial action.
“There is nothing to worry about. The company is negotiating with the union to resolve the matter,” spokesman Paul Arinze told AFP.
ExxonMobil is the second largest oil operator in Nigeria after Shell. It exports around 650,000 barrels per day of the country’s overall production of 2.5 million barrels.
The strike threat risks further unnerving the world energy market, which is already jittery about the international crisis over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme and unrest in the Niger Delta.
Nigeria’s current oil production rate is 20-percent below normal due to the unrest in the Delta region.
Over the past three months separatist fighters have carried out a series of attacks on Niger Delta oil facilities, forcing foreign multinationals to cut exports from Nigeria. ExxonMobil has not been directly affected by the crisis.