Kuwait oil and gas workers to strike

Thousands of workers at Kuwait’s state-owned oil, gas and petrochemical companies will strike from Sunday 17 April as a dispute over government plans to cut their benefits and wages continues.

The President of the Oil and Petrochemical Industries Workers Confederation Saif Al-Qahtani told a news conference yesterday that the general strike would begin from 7am but did not specify when it would end, according to Reuters.

Oil workers in the country fear cuts to jobs, salaries and benefits packages will come from a planned government overhaul of the public sector payroll system. They are also protesting plans to privatise part of the oil sector.

Production and exports would not be affected by the strike, a spokesman for Kuwait’s national oil company Kuwait National Petroleum Corp (KNPC) said.

“If the strike happens we do have a strategy in place to deal with this kind of action where extra staff will be used to run operations,” said Khaled Al-Asousi, KNPC’s deputy CEO for support services, adding that some oil facilities might be shut down temporarily.

Kuwait pumps three million barrels of crude oil per day and has three refineries with a combined capacity of 930,000 bpd.