International oil companies in Yemen are getting back to work after Yemeni national workers at state oil firm Petromasila called off a strike.
The strike, which began on 9 February, brought Yemeni oil production to a standstill.
According to the Yemen Post, Yemeni oil workers’ representatives reached a deal with Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi – the sole electoral candidate for an upcoming national poll on 21 February.
The strike had disrupted oil production for Total and DNO, and ended before tank capacity in the field was reached, which would have triggered a complete production shut down.
“Hadi and Prime Minister of the caretaker government, Mohammed Saleh Basindoh, have met with us and promised to pay all our severance packages owed by former operator of the company, Canadian Nexen,” a senior engineer at the state-owned company told Yemen Post on condition of anonymity.
The strike started over claims by Yemeni oil employees that Nexen has not paid them their due severance after the company quit the Masila 14 block in December 2011. Nexen was unable to renew their production sharing agreement with the government as political turmoil gripped the government of President Abdullah Saleh.
Nexen, which recently reported a 73 per cent drop in fourth quarter earnings to $43 million, said production at east Al-Hajr resumed Friday after briefly shutting down the day before.
The strike is estimated to have cost the Yemeni government $122.5 million in lost revenue. Yemen is seeking 270,000 tonnes of diesel for domestic needs, as the continued outage of the Ma’arib pipeline has led to a shortage of feedstock to the country’s Aden refinery. Saudi Arabia has been helping Yemen with its shortfall in crude, but is not expected to donate further oil shipments in March.
The Yemen Post also reports that other workers have ended their strikes after government mediation. A source inside the country reports piles of rubbish throughout the country after refuse collectors went on strike.
