Nigeria oil workers insist on strike, vow to shut down all operations

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior
Staff Association of Nigeria
(PENGASSAN) said on Wednesday it
would go ahead with its planned
nationwide strike from Thursday.
The group’s spokesperson, Emmanuel
Ojugbana, said chairmen and
secretaries in its four zones and
branches have concluded plans to
ensure a complete shutdown of the
country’s oil and gas industry
operations and activities.
On Monday, PENGASSAN had directed
its zonal leaders to sensitize members
about the planned strike over
“unresolved issues” affecting the
smooth operation of the oil and gas
industry.
Mr. Ojugbana said since the directive,
its members have been meeting to
fine-tune strategies towards the strike,
with its key officers holding their final
meeting on Wednesday.
“In the meeting, the method of the
gradual shutdown of the industry was
critically examined and adopted by the
members. The action, which will
cripple all activities and operations in
the oil and gas sector, will affect all the
sub-sectors.
“Our members in the Department of
Petroleum Resources (DPR), Petroleum
Products Pricing Regulatory Agency
(PPPRA), Petroleum Equalisation Fund
(Monitoring Board) PEF (MB), Pipelines
and Products Marketing Company
(PPMC), National Petroleum Investment
Management Services (NAPIMS), oil
majors, labour and contract services
companies, and petroleum products
marketing companies will join in the
action,” Mr Ojugbana said.
PENGASSAN accused the government
of deliberately frustrating efforts to
resolve the issues by failing reconvene
a meeting after two inconclusive
negotiations on June 23 and 30 were
put off.
Urging Nigerians and industry
operators who would be affected by the
action to show understanding, the
spokesperson said the industrial action
was critical to the survival of the oil
and gas industry, which remains the mainstay of the
country’s economy.
The acting general secretary, Lumumba Okugbawa,
later told PREMIUM TIMES that the association’s
demands were not selfish, as they bordered on
issues that would guarantee the continued survival
of the oil and gas industry and the country’s
economy.
Mr. Okugbawa listed some of the issues to include
backlog of cash call arrears dating back to 2014,
which he said had greatly hampered the ability of
the joint venture partners with the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to discharge
their obligations both to the industry and their
workers.
Other issues include the poor state of the country’s
refineries and the massive waste of resources on
turn around maintenance (TAM); continued
importation of petroleum products; on-going
industry reforms and NNPC restructuring as well as
the politicisation of the passage of the Petroleum
Industry Bill (PIB).
“Nigerians must understand that without
government’s counterpart funding to the joint
venture budget (the cash call), there is no way the
industry will grow. Where the NNPC and its partners
are not able to meet their obligations to the JVs, the
first casualties are the workers, who are our
members,” Mr. Okugbawa said.
He said the era when the IOCs carried 100 per cent
the funding obligations of the JV and recoup from
the proceeds was gone, saying the government must
wake up to its responsibility, by meeting its
counterpart funding to the various JVs in the
country.
The current gale of divestment by IOCs from the
country, he said, was another way of rationalising
the industry workforce and throwing more people
into the labour market, pointing out that where the
IOCs fold up, because they could meet their
obligations, their workers would be sacked.
“The irresponsible behaviour of government is
negatively impacting the economy and the operating
environment. In the last two months, at least 50
workers in various service companies, namely
Halliburton, Schlumberger, Sapetro, Fugro, Frontier,
Universal, Arko, have been laid off by the IOCs,
because they do not have the means to continue to
engage them,” Mr. Okugbawa said.
He cited the case of Nigeria Agip Oil Company,
which has not been able to engage the services its
partner, Arco, for over three years, resulting in the
sack of most of services firm’s workers.
On the insecurity in the Niger Delta, Mr, Okugbawa
said the renewed attacks oil facilities by armed
groups in the region have exposed most of its
members to danger, as many of them lost their lives
in recent attacks on Agip, Chevron and other
companies in the region.
He decried the lack of involvement of oil workers in
the on-going restructuring in the Nigeria Nuclear
Regulatory Agency (NNRA), Nigerian Content
Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB),
Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF),
Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), PPPRA, DPR, and
PEF, saying the two unions should be consulted in
the planning and implementation of such polices.