Jakarta, ThedailyID — Norway’s offshore oil industry locked out 1,000 oil service workers on Saturday, escalating a labor dispute that could disrupt drilling operations and reduce the country’s oil and gas production.
According to Reuters, industry group Offshore Norway imposed the lockout in response to an ongoing strike by members of the Safe labor union.
The measure affects workers at several major energy service companies, including SLB, Halliburton, Subsea 7, DOF Subsea, Weatherford, DeepOcean and Baker Hughes.
Offshore Norway said the lockout took effect at 7 a.m. local time on Saturday. It applies to around 1,000 Safe members covered by the industry’s well services wage agreement.
The agreement covers a total of 1,770 workers. However, employers exempted about 500 employees because they perform safety-critical roles.
The labor dispute has already disrupted operations across Norway’s offshore sector.
Several drilling activities have stopped, including work on four mobile drilling rigs, five fixed offshore installations and one intervention vessel.
Offshore Norway estimates the dispute could cut oil and gas production by around 12,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) next week.
If the strike continues beyond mid-July, production losses could exceed 120,000 boepd, the group said.
Norway is Europe’s largest supplier of pipeline gas. The country also produces about 2% of global oil and pumps roughly 4 million boepd of combined oil and gas.
Safe launched the strike on June 15 after wage negotiations with employers failed. Meanwhile, another labor union, Styrke, accepted the industry’s pay proposal.
Safe announced on Friday that it plans to withdraw another 63 members from the remaining exempt workforce starting July 1. The move would add to the 378 union members already participating in the strike.
Under Norwegian law, the government can intervene if a strike or lockout threatens the country’s vital economic interests. However, officials have indicated they will use that authority only as a last resort.
“The threshold for intervention is very high. Mandatory wage arbitration is, and should remain, the last resort,” Labor Minister Kjersti Stenseng told Reuters earlier this week.
