Oil Workers Threaten Nationwide Strike Over Plan of sell of Refineries

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) have kicked against plans by the federal government to privatise the nation’s four refineries.

The unions which jointly staged a protest against the planned refineries privatisation at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Towers in Abuja, yesterday, have threatened to embark on an indefinite strike come January 1, 2014, should government fail to reverse the privatisation plans.

 They have given the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, one week to publicly retract the proposed plan to sell the refineries which have combined installed refining capacities of 445,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude.

In his address, President of PENGASSAN, Babatunde Ogun, said the move to privatise the refineries was viewed by the unions with some suspicion especially with provisions in the PIB for the creation of a vibrant National Oil Company (NOC).

They further argued that the plan ran contrary to provisions in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) currently before the National Assembly for consideration and passage.

He said: “We have a PIB that we wrote; the thrust of the PIB is not what the government is pursuing. We have had up to seven agreements with the government and nothing has happened so far.We do not trust the government anymore on this.”

Ogun who stressed that the unions were not consulted by the government on the new development said, “the minister has a total disconnect from us and we have people who work on her behalf that discuss issues, like the GMD of the NNPC but there is no time that we have discussed this issue.

“By the first week in January, be rest assured that PENGASSAN and NUPENG will go on an indefinite strike; we need a retraction of that statement that said that the refineries privatisation will be started by the first quarter of 2014,” he added.

While insisting that the development was a confirmation of the unions position that that industry is secretive, Ogun said, “you cannot sell something without a model and without Nigerians knowing what you are doing, the nature through which they do business in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria is fraught with corruption.”