OSLO: Mediation to avert a wage strike that could shut down three Norwegian onshore oil and gas plants, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Nyhamna facility that processes about 20 percent of the U.K.’s gas supply, will start on Thursday.
The SAFE union and the Norwegian Oil and Gas Association representing employers will have until midnight on Thursday to reach an agreement on wages for onshore oil workers when the mediation talks start at 10 a.m. that day in Oslo, the union’s first deputy leader Roy Aleksandersen said in a phone interview. Otherwise 338 workers will walk out, shutting Nyhamna as well as Statoil ASA’s liquefied natural gas plant at Melkoeya and Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Slagen refinery, he said.
“The three facilities would be shut down,” Aleksandersen said. Maintenance work at Slagen would also need to stop, delaying the resumption of refining operations, he said.
The facilities would “most probably” have to halt normal operations, said the employers’ head negotiator, Jan Hodneland, who confirmed the possibility of a delay in resuming output at Slagen.
