Offshore oilfield workers striking in Norway

Up to 700 oil workers have started a strike in the Norwegian North Sea demanding earlier retirement benefit. Oseberg and Heidrun are the fields most affected. Oseberg field is operated by Statoil ASA (OSE: STL, NYSE: STO, 49.30%) with Norwegian state owned Petoro 33.60 % Total S.A. (Euronext: FP NYSE: TOT 10 %) Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM, 4.7 %) and ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP; 2.4 %) as its partners. Heidrun is also operated by Statoil (12.40%) but Petoro (58.16%) and ConocoPhillips (24.31%) have bigger stakes while Eni (S.p.A. (BIT: ENI, NYSE: E, 5.11%) rounds up the partners lot. The fields will come offline in 4-5 days, which would result in disruption of some 268 000 boe per day or about 7% of Norway’s production. Oseberg is currently producing about three times more than Heidrun. Statoil’s Tjeldbergodden industrial complex in Møre og Romsdal county, which has a natural gas processing plant for Heidrun output and a methanol plant is already being shut down.

Oil workers in Norway already enjoy the highest pay in the world with an average around 1 million NOK (over 130 000 Euros), which is about double that of the world average in the industry, and retire on average at the age of 65 with a 66% pension from the age of 67. The workers representatives the Industry Energy and Safe unions demand higher pay and the right to retire at 62. The unions say that the employers are trying to steal workers right to pension. Employers’ representative Norwegian Oil Industry Association says the demands correspond to a 20% wage hike if the pension demand would accrue fully from age 62 and does not even plan to take the retirement issue into the negotiation table, calling it absolutely absurd. The strike will cost the industry some 150 million NOK or 20 million Euros per day. If either side sought to escalate the industrial action, an order to return to work by the Government could ensue.