The path toward a strike was cleared last week by Australia’s Fair Work Commission, which ruled that workers at Woodside’s North West Shelf and Chevron’s Wheatstone and Gorgon LNG facilities could ballot for a strike action. The subsequent vote saw 99% of Offshore Alliance trade union members at NWS approve a strike if an agreement on wages and benefits increases cannot be reached with Woodside Energy. Chevron workers are expected to vote by next week.
Following the FWC’s decision, LNG prices spiked around the world. In Europe, where fuels are in short supply thanks to the European Union’s boycott of Russian energy exports, prices rose by 40%. They jumped another 10% on Monday in the wake of the union vote.
“What's happening here is we've increased prices to be sure that we are going to continue to attract cargos from the rest of the world,” Thierry Bros, a professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and a contributor to the independent specialized website Natural Gas World, told Sputnik on Wednesday.
“And last year we managed to keep the lights on, but we did this by rerouting LNG cargo [using] extremely high prices. And by putting the lights off in poorer countries, in Bangladesh, in Pakistan, and possibly in India, because we've taken the LNG away from their hands into our hands,” Bros added.
By themselves, NWS, Wheatstone and Gorgon account for 11% of global LNG exports. Woodside’s facility has an export capacity of 16.9 million tonnes per annum (tpa), while Gorgon produces 15.6 million tpa and supplies a domestic gas power plant capable of producing 300 terajoules of power per day for Western Australia. Wheatstone pumps out some 8.9 tpa.
“Gas producers like Woodside and Chevron might be used to throwing their weight around in countries with weak industrial laws but Australian workers have fought for over 100 years for strong industrial rights,” Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) Western Australia secretary Brad Gandy said last week. The Offshore Alliance trade union, a partnership between AWU and the MUA (Maritime Union of Australia).
“The sooner these huge, profitable gas producers approach these negotiations pragmatically and get back around the bargaining table the better.”
According to media reports on Tuesday, Woodside said negotiations with the trade union have yielded some “positive progress” and that “the parties have reached an in-principle agreement on a number of issues,” but labor leaders were less optimistic.
"Woodside are well off the pace on key bargaining issues including job security and remuneration," Offshore Alliance said in a Wednesday statement.
“If OA members on the Platforms carried on like Woodside's HR management did yesterday, they'd be on the first chopper out,” the union said, noting that Woodside’s labor chief called a key union negotiator a “d*ckhead” during the talks.
“Woodside's values are a sham and yesterday's bargaining meeting shows that the Woodside bosses pick and choose when these values apply,” the union continued. “Woodside's actions and bargaining position at yesterday's meeting will determine the destiny of our bargaining campaign.”