Oil Shipments Disrupted by Nigerian Strike

The Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Shipments from Nigeria's main crude oil export terminals ground to a halt Tuesday, a day after thousands of oil and petroleum industry workers went on strike, officials said.

However, drilling and production in the world's sixth largest oil exporter continued at nearly the highest levels ever, a senior official of the Shell Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity. Nigeria's large Bonny and Forcados sea terminals were among those affected.

The strike initiated Monday by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, joined by at least one other union, precipitated a consumer fuel shortage in the commercial capital, Lagos, where lines of cars snaked through service stations to wait for dwindling fuel supplies.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIQDWRDK5C.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), March 08, 2000

Answers

hmmmm... so why are the workers "striking"? i find it interesting the senior official found it important to say the drilling and production are at the "highest levels ever" and on condition of anonimity.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), March 08, 2000.

An Opis Alert from this morning had this to say: "The overseas market was initially hit with a US inventory data report that had crude stocks gaining over 7-milliom bbl last week. This news was followed by the resumption of crude loadings at Statoil's Gullfaks/Statfjord North Sea oil fields and Shell's restart of crude liftings in Nigeria." Not clear to me if this means the strike is over or just that Shell has found a workaround.

-- (whatever@you.want), March 08, 2000.