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Niamey - Fuel deliveries from Niger's only oil refinery were disrupted on Wednesday by the start of a three-day strike over working conditions and pay, a local union official said.
The Soraz refinery, a joint venture between China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and the Nigerian government, processes about 12 000-16 000 barrels of oil per day, offering Niger's only large-scale means of transforming crude oil into petroleum products such as gasoline.
"The strike is well observed", the oil workers union's spokesman Cisse Amadou told Reuters. "The loading of the tankers is almost paralysed. Usually we load around one hundred fuel trucks per day, at this moment only a dozen have been loaded."
CNPC was not immediately available for comment.
An official in the oil ministry, who asked not to be named, acknowledged the strike but said that supplies will not be disrupted because deliveries can be drawn from stockpiles.
The refinery, in which CNPC holds a 60% stake and the Nigerian government the rest, is located 800 km (500 miles) east of the capital Niamey, and processes crude from CNPC's fields in the Agadem zone in the east for supply to the domestic market and to importers in Mali and Burkina Faso.
Workers at the plant, which employs over 400 Nigerians, launched a series of protests last year because of discrepancies in pay between local and Chinese employees.
"This has to stop", Amadou said, saying that the union was ready to strengthen protests.
