Norwegian oil workers on strike: production not yet affected

Employees at Baker Hughes’ Norwegian unit have gone on strike over pay and pension demands. Whilst drilling and maintenance have been affected, as drilling operations will have to be gradually wound down as per safety regulations, production is set to remain unhindered. 12 rigs in total are affected.

Ola Anders Skauby, a spokesman for Statoil said, “There’ll be no short-term impact on production, but we’ll have to postpone some drilling projects … It will affect drilling on some of the mobile rigs we rent and on some of our own, but we can’t yet say how many projects this will impact.”

Statoil operates 7 of the affected rigs, whilst Marathon, Centrica, Suncor, Shell and ExxonMobil operate the remaining five.

114 workers, represented by the SAFE labour union, went on strike after a deadline, regarding pay and pension demands, was not met. The employees are reportedly demanding the restitution of an earlier contract that was in place under their previous employer, BJ Services.

Edited from various sources by David Bizley

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