The biggest refinery in Africa, the Dangote plant in Nigeria, has become the bone of contention in a bitter labor dispute which has led to a nationwide strike in the top African crude oil producer.
The main Nigerian oil union launched on Monday a nationwide strike after the Dangote refinery fired last week as many as 800 workers. The strike continued through Tuesday, threatening to reduce fuel supply in the country relying on the new processing facility and in several neighboring counties which import fuels from Dangote.
The Nigerian oil workers’ union, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), has said that the Dangote refinery, owned by Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has fired the workers for unionizing.
The Dangote management, for its part, claims that the dismissals were part of staff restructuring and those dismissed engaged in “acts of sabotage”.
Government-brokered talks to end the dispute failed to resolve the issue on Monday and the strike continues on Tuesday, with union members suspending work and closing offices of key stakeholders in Nigeria’s oil industry, including the national oil company NNPC Limited, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), and the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA).
The Dangote refinery’s management has been granted a court injunction to bar the union from obstructing crude oil and gas supply to the processing facility, but the PENGASSAN union claims it hasn’t been formally served with the injunction.
If the dispute is not resolved within days, industry observers fear that Nigeria’s fuel supply will be under threat, and even its oilfields could be affected if other unions join the strike.
The 650,000-barrels-per-day Dangote refinery, which began operations last year, has just started exporting fuel to regions other than West Africa. The labor dispute and strikes would be a setback for Nigeria’s dream of self-sufficiency in fuel supply and a player on the export markets.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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