Workers Of Addax Petroleum Suspend Strike, Resume Negotiation On Tuesday

Workers of Addax Petroleum Development Nigeria have called off their strike to protest against anti-labour practices by the firm.

The decision to call off the industrial action is expected to save possible reduction in Nigeria’s crude oil production by 22,000 barrels per day.

Addax, owned by China’s Sinopec Group, has four Oil Mining Licences, OML 123, 124, 126 and 137, and operates the assets in Production Sharing Contract with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited.

The company has about 324 Nigerian employees, which include 141 permanent staff and 183 contract employees.
The workers, who are members of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, had embarked on strike as a result of Addax management refusal to engage them on labour related issues after the announcement of the revocation of its licences by the Federal Government.

But in a statement on Friday night, the workers said that the decision to call of the strike was taken after series of intervention from numerous stakeholders.

The statement signed the Senior Assistant General Secretary, Lagos Zone, PENGASSAN, Babatunde Oke, said that Addax management has agreed for a meeting with the branch leadership on Tuesday 2nd of August, 2022.

It reads, “After series of intervention from numerous stakeholders, Addax management has agreed for a meeting with the branch leadership on Tuesday 2nd of August, 2022. With this development, the Zone is hereby directing that normalcy be restored across all locations including OML 123, 124, 126 and 137 effective immediately.

“The National leadership of our Association will continually engage all stakeholders for the timely close out of the outstanding items. Solidarity Forever.”

The workers had threatened to shut all the company’s operations including oil wells, valves crude lifting and export terminals operated by Addax if the company fails to engage them, adding that all attempts to get the management to the negotiation table had not yielded desired results.