Oil workers strike in Oman

Oil workers strike in Oman

Omani state oil workers have gone on strike to demand higher wages, joining other sections of workers who have launched strike action and ongoing popular protests against the regime of Sultan Qaboos bin Said.

The work stoppage by employees at Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is the first strike at a national oil company in the Persian Gulf countries since popular protests erupted in January and swept across Arab North Africa and the Middle East.






Aerial View of the Omani Capital, Situated on Muscat Bay of the Gulf of Oman


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The strike began Tuesday when some 400 workers held protests in front of PDO headquarters in the capital, Muscat, and stopped work for several hours at the Marmul oil field and the Karn Al Alam gas field.

Marmal is the site of 12 of Oman’s 400 oil fields and Karn Al Alam is the country’s biggest gas field. There are only several hundred workers in each location.The protests and stoppages continued Wednesday.

Reuters news service quoted a protesting PDO employee, Suleiman Al-Harthy, as saying, “We are the least-paid oil workers in the Gulf. We want to be paid the same as other oil workers in other Gulf countries.”

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