don't need so much stinkin' west african oil production either.......although it is sweeter & lighter...<g>
Mobil Oil Strike In Nigeria In 5th Day; Crude Export Stopped
Dow Jones
April 28, 2008: 06:19 AM EST
IBADAN, Nigeria -(Dow Jones)- A strike by workers at Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, or MPN, entered its fifth day Monday and stopped crude oil exports by the company, a senior union official told Dow Jones Newswires.
"As we speak no production is going on at Mobil, and the export terminal at Eket has been shut down," George-Olumoroti Olusola, Mobil branch chairman of the Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or Pengassan, said Monday.
The Eket export terminal, operated by ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), in the southeastern Akwa Ibom state, ships around 866,000 barrels of crude a day.
Olusola said the workers achieved zero production as at 3 p.m. local time ( 1400 GMT) Friday.
"The Mobil management has not constructively engaged us in discussions. Maybe they are waiting for the outcome of the talks initiated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation," Olusola told Dow Jones.
The state-run NNPC management is mediating in the strike, which the workers began Thursday over their demands for higher wages.
The NNPC, national leadership of Pengassan and Mobil are expected to meet in Abuja Monday in a bid to resolve the dispute.
Olusola said Pengassan national officers were already in Abuja for the talks and were emphasizing that Mobil workers would not end the strike before resuming negotiations with Mobil as demanded by its management.
MPN, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corp. is the second-largest oil company in Nigeria after Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB). Shell has already seen its production down because of ongoing attacks on its facilities in the Niger Delta by armed militants. MPN and Esso Exploration and Production Nigeria Ltd., or EPNL, ExxonMobil's other upstream subsidiary in Nigeria, produce around 866,000 barrels a day.
Yemi Fakayejo, MPN public affairs adviser, said Mobil had asked the workers to call off their strike before talks could resume.
"We remain on that, end the strike and we talk," Fakayejo told Dow Jones Monday.
The latest shutdown of MPN production has further reduced Nigeria's oil pumping capacity and over 1 million barrels of the country's crude oil has been shut in by the Mobil workers' strike and militants' activities in the Niger Delta.
Militants attack on a Shell facility Thursday has forced the company to shut in 169,000 barrels a day. Before the Mobil strike and the latest attack on Shell facility, Odein Ajumogobia, Nigeria's oil minister, said the country's crude oil production had declined to around 2.2 million barrels a day, below its Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries's quota of 2.205 million barrels a day. Ajumogobia said 500,000 barrels a day was inaccessible because of security issues in the Niger Delta.
"The Mobil strike that has shut in more than 800,000 barrels a day, the Shell loss of 169,000 barrels a day and the loss of 500,000 barrels a day in the Niger Delta roughly takes Nigeria's production cutback to more than 50% of its OPEC quota," an oil industry source said Monday. |
