Nigeria: Pengassan Strike Grounds Chevron-Texaco Management

Tag : petroleum solvent

His words: "Our members have helped build Texaco into a brand thathas become attractive to private entrepreneurs, who are nowinterested in acquiring it. They laboured night and day to make thebrand what it is today. Now that Chevron wants to divest its stake,it is not interested in settling all pending labour issues."
All the management was interested in, according to Olowoshile, "isto sell the shares and take all the money away from this economy.We are demanding nothing less than 30 per cent as compensation toour workers. We hear somebody is set to buy it for between 1billion and 1.2 billion dollars. That is nearly 150 billion. Wecannot allow them to take away that money from our economy. Theymust compensate the workers with a minimum of 30 per cent of thatamount."
The downstream workers who had embarked on a strike in August topress home for better conditions of service, 30% compensation onthe sale of 60% equity, amongst sundry demands had until about 2weeks ago refused to call off the strike, on the grounds thatChevron Texaco management was not sincere in its negotiations.
Olowoshile charged chevron to wake up to their calls in order tocall off the strike.
One of the senior management staff who spoke on the condition ofanonymity disclosed that the need for the strike became apparentwhen the management only addressed some of the demands of thejunior workers, leaving them out of the picture.
Alleging that the company was overpriced going by its market valueon the exchange, the PENGASSAN scribe said that if the transactionwas done on the exchange, the share price could not be more thanbetween N250 to N350. He decried the situation where some companieswere offering to pay N900 per share, expressing worry that if thetransaction was allowed to go on, the company may perpetuallyremain in debt.
"That company is not worth more than N350 per share, but now theywant to sell to a preferred bidder who is willing to pay N900 pershare. The question now is how will the preferred bidder liquidatethe debt, bearing in mind that all that money will be sourcedlocally? Texaco's profit is in the region of N5 billion per annum.Its first quarter result for 2008 was a loss. The exposure to bankswill be tremendous, so you can see that our worries are justified.We want this company to remain a solvent company. But Chevronpeople are merely interested in collecting our money here andrunning away," he said.