Shell (LON:SHEL) has told its customers that it will be unable to deliver liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments from its Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) facility off north-western Australia due to industrial action over pay, which has been extended to July 21.
Shell stopped production on Monday and started sending workers off the FLNG unit as work stoppages were affecting the company’s ability to moor LNG tankers, reported Reuters.
The work stoppages started on July 10 and have disrupted LNG shipments since then. As a result output was sharply reduced in June.
On Monday, workers at Prelude FLNG, overwhelmingly rejected the company’s latest pay offer, with 95% opposed, said the Offshore Alliance, which combines the Maritime Union of Australia and Australian Workers’ Union. It urged the company to negotiate with the union.
“This situation could actually be resolved very easily if management simply drops it’s strange, hyper-aggressive industrial relations tactics,” Offshore Alliance Coordinator Zach Duncalfe said in a statement.
Offshore Alliance said in a Facebook post today that its members are now into their 33rd day of industrial strike action on Shell’s Prelude.
“Shell’s incompetent and dysfunctional management of industrial relations is a self-inflicted mess which clearly needs to be resolved by their senior management,” said the Alliance.
As reported by Australia’s ABC, Offshore Alliance’s National Legal Officer Zach Duncalfe has blamed the stoppage on Shell’s negotiating tactics.
“Shell has decided to adopt a very hostile, intransigent method of bargaining and it’s their way or the highway,” he said.
“They’re putting themselves in this position by a not talking to us and putting out a substandard enterprise agreement that they knew – or should have known – that no-one would vote for.”
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