Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Business

Battered by Crude Rout, Norway Now Faces Risk of Oil Strikes

  • Offshore-worker wage talks ended in less than a minute: union
  • Strike would have immediate consequences for production
Workers move along an access way above the giant supporting legs of the Oseberg A offshore gas platform operated by Statoil ASA in the Oseberg North Sea oil field 140kms from Bergen, Norway, on Friday, Jan. 17, 2014.

Workers move along an access way above the giant supporting legs of the Oseberg A offshore gas platform operated by Statoil ASA in the Oseberg North Sea oil field 140kms from Bergen, Norway, on Friday, Jan. 17, 2014.

Photographer: Kristian HelgesenBloomberg
By

Updated on

Norway’s oil companies and the industry’s biggest union had set aside two days to negotiate over wages for offshore workers. Instead, the talks broke down after less than a minute.

The failure shows the width of the gap that will need to be bridged in state-backed mediation if Norway, western Europe’s biggest producer of oil and gas, is to avoid strikes that would deepen the crisis provoked by the collapse of crude prices since 2014.