By Rodrigo Viga Gaier
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A partial strike by employees at Brazil’s environmental agency, which approves oil licenses, is reducing the nation’s oil output by some 80,000 barrels per day, the head of oil lobby group IBP Roberto Ardenghy said on Monday.
On Friday, Ibama employees in 14 states voted to strike due to a dispute over wages, career structure and working conditions, making the strike official after months of dragging out environmental licensing procedures and other activities.
“We started with a reduction in oil production of 5,000 to 10,000 barrels per day, and reached 80,000 barrels per day on Friday,” Ardenghy told journalists on the sidelines of an event in Rio de Janeiro, noting the dispute between government and Ibama employees has now lasted more than 160 days.
In May, Petrobras had estimated a possible impact of 2% on its annual production due to the Ibama strike, which has affected the licensing of its oil wells.
More than a dozen firms in the oil and gas sector have been impacted by delays in environmental licensing, said national union Ascema in a press release on Friday.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier; Writing by Andre Romani and Fabio Teixeira; Editing by Sarah Morland and Kylie Madry)
