– Strike break – NRK Norway – Summary of news from different parts of the country

– It is not an alien thought with greater escalation than announced. Frame production is the goal, Lederne union leader Audun Ingvartsen tells NRK.

On Wednesday, 43 oil workers went on strike at the giant Johan Sverdrup field.

On Sunday, the strike may intensify with another 123 members in Gudrun, Gina Krog, Kvitebjørn and Gjøa. Apart from Gjøa, which is operated by the oil company Neptun Energy, Equinor is affected.

States that there are multiple lists

The Johan Sverdrup field has been in operation for a year and can produce 470,000 barrels of oil per day.

Ingvartsen says it is Equinor employees with key roles in controlling production who have gone on strike. But production continues to function normally, according to Equinor.

– We receive worrying messages that it is people from other unions who do the work we should do. The employer shuffles. Lack of respect for the rules of the game contributes to our being so offensive, says Ingvartsen.

Equinor denies that the company is acting fraudulently.

– We do not recognize ourselves in a claim that we operate outside the agreement structure during a labor dispute, Norwegian continental shelf spokesperson Morten Eek tells NRK.

Ingvartsen claims that Equinor created two squads at Johan Sverdrup’s field this week.

One list shows staffing if there were no strike, where its members would have played critical roles in keeping production going, according to Ingvartsen. Now there is another list that applies, he says.

– According to our information, our members have moved to tasks that are less critical to production. If Equinor had run the original listing, the platform admin would have had to shut down production, says and continues:

– I don’t like development. From my point of view, this breaks a strike.

Breaking strikes is not illegal and is used for employees who, in addition to their own duty, are willing to take away work that strikers would have done in a normal situation.

– We can keep production going in the future.

Eek says they don’t acknowledge themselves in such a statement.

– Those who are on strike have been sent home from Johan Sverdrup, and those who should have left, have not gathered due to the strike. Those on board can now, with sufficient competence and ability, cover the necessary tasks safely. There are every opportunity to do so without breaking agreements or having someone stay longer than planned.

He says it includes operation, maintenance and other critical tasks.

– We have not changed the exit plans of our operational personnel, neither during nor before the strike, says Eek.

– Has Equinor actually had multiple lists on board this week?

– No, we don’t. We have had to greatly reduce the level of activity on board, which has led to changes in the project tasks. But we completely follow the agreement and the rules of the game for a strike, so I do not understand a claim to break a strike.

– How long do people have enough time to resolve staffing during the strike?

– We keep production until further notice with the staff who are at work. So it’s too early to tell if anything will change this in the long run.

Requires collective agreement on land

This fall, the Lederne, Norsk industri and Safe unions have negotiated with Norwegian oil and gas on behalf of employers, where Equinor is organized.

While Norsk industri og Safe agreed to a total salary supplement of NOK 4,700 before the mediation deadline of September 30, the leaders went on strike.

Leaders have made it a primary requirement that members with control room duties who previously worked offshore, and who can now perform the work from a control room on shore, should remain part of the leaders’ collective agreement.

– This is the difficult point because the mediation has gone under the trade agreement. It is in the name that you should include personnel who work at sea, not on land. We believe that the requirement of leaders is outside the scope of the platform agreement, says information manager Kolbjørn Andreassen at Norwegian Oil and Gas to NRK.

If the demand is met, Ingvartsen is ready with the pen to sign the agreement and abandon the escalation of the strike.

– It costs nothing. We are not super happy with what others have signed, but when we do, they get our signature. But Norwegian oil and gas will not speak to us, he says.

– We have nothing to talk about now, because we broke up yesterday morning, says Andreassen on Norwegian Oil and Gas, and explains:

– Nothing new has come up since yesterday indicating that we will have more contact, Andreassen replies.

– What is needed to resume conversations?

– There must be opportunities that we do not see at the moment, he says.

Already cuts in production

If the strike leads to a complete halt in production at Johan Sverdrup, it will affect more than a tenth of Norway’s oil production, according to Norwegian Oil and Gas.

But government permits to produce oil are so flexible that a production stoppage can be obtained on the Norwegian platform, according to Ingvartsen and oil analysts with whom NRK has spoken.

– If oil companies produce less than they are allowed to produce in one month, they can produce above the permit next month, Rystad Energy senior analyst Emil Varre Sandøy tells NRK.

Production at the Johan Sverdrup field has already declined, because when the price of oil plunged to $ 20 a barrel this spring, OPEC, Russia and the G20 countries joined forces to cut production and raise the price of oil again.

The Ministry of Oil and Energy changed the production licenses of the year to oil companies in May. Thus, Norway produces 134,000 fewer barrels of oil every day in the second half of the year.

In August, production averaged 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

The government does not plan to change production permits to make up for lost production during a strike, communications adviser Peder Qvale from the ministry told NRK.

Strikes have less to say than usual

The strike on the Norwegian platform has also received attention in foreign media, because a production cut could affect the price of oil a bit.

But even though the price of oil is sensitive to changes, countries participating in the production cut may increase supplies a bit to make up for the loss of oil from the Norwegian shelf, according to Swedbank oil analyst Teodor. Sveen-Nilsen.

– An escalation of the strike with closure will have little effect on the price of oil. OPEC now has more spare capacity than usual, so the situation is somewhat different than it usually is, he tells NRK.

Sveen-Nilsen sees little effect on Equinor and Aker Bp’s earnings.

– A 10-day production shutdown will affect earnings by a few percentage points. In short, it is nothing dramatic.

The production cutback that has already been implemented makes a production stoppage less inconvenient than normal, according to Varre Sandøy.

If Equinor chooses to increase production later in the event of a production interruption to make up for lost time, profits will hardly be affected.

– There may be gains or losses depending on what the price of oil is when production resumes, compared to the price of oil that could have been produced during a shutdown, he says.