Talks to avert a strike between a leading white collar union and Chevron Nigeria Ltd. have collapsed, a union official said Friday.
“The talks collapsed completely,” Jonathan Omare, secretary of the Chevron Corp. (CVX) unit of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or Pengassan, told Dow Jones Newswires. “Keep your ears to the ground for the next line of action.”
The union had threatened to go on strike on June 18 if its labor dispute with Chevron over safety standards, staffing and the removal of Fred Nelson, the company’s head in Nigeria, remained unresolved.
Omare said Nigerian employees have been replaced with expatriates and the union wanted Chevron to respect Nigeria’s expatriate quota laws.
The talks to resolve the dispute were deadlocked on Tuesday and a new round of negotiations was held Thursday.
Omare didn’t say whether Pengassan will now strike.
He said the Nigerian government had indicated interest in mediating in the dispute between Pengassan and Chevron.
No-one at Chevron or its Nigerian unit was immediately available to comment.
A strike could affect Chevron Nigeria’s daily output of about 350,000 barrels of crude and 14 million cubic feet of gas from the company’s 32 fields in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s crude oil output has already taken a further hit this week following an attack Thursday on Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDSA) Bonga oil field by armed fighters of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
The attack forced Shell to shut in 225,000 barrels a day of output. Shell said Friday that it hasn’t set a date for the resumption of output at the field.
memebers of the Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited division of Pengassan went on strike for a week in April over demands for adequate compensation in line with productivity and over issues related to pensions, medical services and safety standards.
The strike shut in over 800,000 barrels of crude.