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27 November, 2006
Last week’s kidnappings and poor rescue attempt of seven Eni SpA employees by the Nigerian Navy has prompted FEMCA-CISL, ICEM affiliate in Italy, to make a second demand within a month on the Italian energy company concerning its Global Framework Agreement with the ICEM.
This time, FEMCA-CISL contacted senior management of Eni with concerns over how to report on workers’ security to the agreement’s partners. Earlier in November, the union had already voiced, in a letter to Eni’s top managers, its displeasure over a brewing dispute with the two ICEM affiliated oil workers’ unions in Nigeria, PENGASSAN and NUPENG. That dispute, covered in the 13 November issue of InBrief (see: /en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2022-Nigerian-Unions-Close-to-Second-National-Strike) relates to Eni providing more security in Nigeria to expatriate workers than to native Nigerians.
FEMCA-CISL, along with the ICEM and Italian trade unions FILCEA-CGIL and UILCEM-UIL, is signatory to a Global Framework Agreement with Eni, Europe’s fourth largest oil producer. The agreement has been in effect since June 2001.
On 21 November, armed militants raided Eni’s Saipem subsidiary offshore loading vessel Mystras, located some 30 miles off Rivers State, and captured seven foreign nationals. The next day, Nigerian Navy forces engaged in a fire fight with the militants, killing one worker – the 58-year-old British production superintendent of the vessel – as well as injuring one other employee. Two of the kidnappers also were killed, as well as one Nigerian seaman.
In the message to the Italian management, FEMCA-CISL demanded that the issue of the company’s security in Nigeria be included on the agenda of the very next meeting of partners of the Global Agreement. The union also insists for the agreement’s partners to be timely informed on any security occurrences anywhere in the world. The company should furthermore inform the unions of all initiatives and discussions with local workers’ representatives.
The demand stems from a health and safety stipulation contained in the Global Agreement. In that, the company commits to deploy its best efforts to improve the safety and health of its workers. In part, it reads, “Eni guarantees the highest standards of health and safety for its employees and the communities in all the areas of the world where it operates.”
Eni’s Saipem and Agip subsidiaries in Nigeria have been the targets of recent violence in the Niger Delta. On 6 November, gunmen took 48 workers – all indigenous Nigerians – hostage at Agip’s Tebidaba flow station in Bayelsa State over an environmental dispute, reportedly over pollution caused by gas flaring. And earlier, militia took workers hostage at a Clough Creek flow station, also in Bayelsa State.
The violence has caused Eni to declare force majeure in Nigeria, forcing the company to halt export of 60,000 barrels-per-day of crude oil.