Nigerian Unions Call Strike to Cut Supply
Short term is up!
Twomore, The reason the strike hasn't strated yet is because this is the month of the Ramadam and struke could get very umpopular. Hence they wanbt to wait for the month of Ramadan finish and then the strike will begin.
Shell single out as the (you the foreigners rare to blame!) it may lead to some vandalism, (which here means cart things away as a revenge, even vengeance needs to be 'milked') That may lead to disruption beyoind the end of the strike.
Crude Oil Rises After Nigerian Unions Call Strike to Cut Supply
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose in New York after reports said unions in Nigeria, the fifth-biggest supplier to the U.S., called a strike this month to disrupt the country's oil exports.
The Nigeria Labour Congress yesterday said it will call a general strike Nov. 16 to protest rising fuel prices, Agence France-Presse reported. The congress and the country's white- collar oil workers' union said Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which pumps almost half the country's oil, was an ``enemy of the Nigerian people,'' and action may be taken against the company, AFP said.
The report gave no details on possible action against Shell. The company is investigating the situation, said Lisa Givert, a Shell spokeswoman in London. Oil prices rose 3 percent during a four-day strike in Nigeria last month.
``Nigeria is definitely an area of concern,'' said Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based research center specializing in energy security. ``The issue of singling out an oil company is a very, very ominous sign.''
Crude oil for December delivery rose as much as 55 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $52.33 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded at $52.07 at 1:57 p.m. Singapore time.
Prices also rose after a power blackout in Kuwait yesterday left 75 percent of the population without power, the state-owned Kuwait News agency quoted Ministry of Electricity undersecretary Saud al-Zeid as saying.
``A lot of the pumps that pump water into the fields are operated by electricity -- any outage could affect the production of oil,'' Luft said. ``It could send prices a little higher, possibly by about a dollar. It comes at a time when there is zero tolerance to these events.''
Disruption
Nigeria, produced 2.42 million barrels of oil a day in September. The loss of the country's low-sulfur, or sweet, crude oil exports to the U.S. would add to output lost from the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Ivan struck the region seven weeks ago.
``The news about a potential Nigerian strike on Nov. 16 will be the major driver for the market to go up in the short term,'' said Dennis Kongsiri, a risk manager at Concord Energy Pte, a Singapore-based crude oil trader.
Brown Ogbeifun, President of the senior oil workers' union, Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, said the union would try to disrupt oil production, AFP reported.
``The market's not going to wait till Nov. 16 to see what happens,'' Randy Simpson, vice-president of supply and trading at New West Petroleum Inc. in Sacramento, California, said before trading began. ``After the beating crude took last week everyone is looking for factors that may turn crude around.''
New York oil futures rose to a record $55.67 a barrel on Oct. 25. Oil fell 6.1 percent last week after U.S. oil stockpiles rose more than expected and China's central bank Oct. 28 raised interest rates for the first time in nine years to slow expansion of its economy.
Kuwait
The blackout in Kuwait yesterday shut output at the country's three oil refineries, which process close to 900,000 barrels a day, a Kuwait National Petroleum Co. official said.
Full refining capacity won't return for three days, Mohammed al-Hajiri, a spokesman for the state-owned refiner, said yesterday.
Kuwait, the third-largest oil producer in the Middle East, has been beset by mishaps at its refineries, including an explosion at al-Ahmadi in 2000 that killed five workers and forced the closure of the facility for three months. The country last month pumped 2.47 million barrels of oil a day, according to Bloomberg data.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Gavin Evans in Wellington, New Zealand at gavinevans@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Peter Langan at plangan@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: November 1, 2004 01:28 EST |
