Hmmm...Oil workers go spiritual as massive sack hits 350,000

Workers in Nigeria’s multi-billion dollars oil and gas industry have resorted to spiritual help, as job cuts by international oil companies (IOCs) and their local counterparts in their global services, including hit an all-time of high of 350,000.

The gale of sack commenced in 2014 till when crude prices started to fall till date.

The situation, a source in one of the major oil companies told New Telegraph, is so scary that some workers that are yet to be affected in Nigeria have resorted to engaging in spiritual exploits to evade the sack, especially in this recession.

“While parents of some workers are in their homestead consulting herbalists, pastors and Islamic clerics for spiritual help,some workers are organising prayer sessions and fellowship somewhere in Port Harcourt and the Ikeja area of Lagos to avert the gale of sack sweeping across various sections of the industry,” he said.

Inventory from 12 major oil producers and traders at the weekend, which revealed that 350,000 workers had lost their jobs, showed that the gloomy situation will persist, as “market will stay in the corridor of $40 to $50, max $55 per barrel price.”

Oil companies, especially explorers, slashed hundreds of billions of dollars in investment to weather the rout, but the majority of oil traders reported the mass job loss using the inventory, according to Bloomberg. It said that market re-balancing has been pushed back by at least six months from their projections in early 2016 because of higher-than-expected production from Iran and Saudi Arabia, coupled with the resilience of U.S. shale output.

“The oil market is not yet balanced,” Saad Rahim, chief economist at oil trading house, Trafigura Group Pte, said, adding that the “market has yet to start working through millions of barrels of inventories accumulated during the downturn.”

Checks by a reporter showed that over 4,000 skilled and 6,000 unskilled workers were affected in Nigeria. Local oil firms in production and servicing strata of the industry have retrenched employees albeit on a smaller scale.