With operations officially beginning with the new branded company during november, Libya Oil Ethiopia Ltd  has begun  the re-branding of 201 retail outlets across Ethiopia, which should be concluded within six months time.

As reported by PetrolWorld in July and August of this year, the final months of Shell Ethiopia's  had been characterised by the serious confrontation it had with the company's labour union over service benefit claims the employees demanded.  It remains to be seen how the new organisation will handle labour relations.  "We are now employees of OiLibya and hope to work in a better environment," Fanuel Samson, president of the Labour Union told Fortune. In what Fanuel referred to as unexpected good news, OiLibya has already pledged a 15pc salary increment for the employees as of January 2009.

"The superseding principle is that people on the ground are best placed to develop our business," Manar E. Sall, Corporate Planning Manager of OiLibya said. The state-owned OiLibya, previously called Tamoil Africa, operates service stations in Egypt and Burkina Faso, and plans to build two pipelines on the continent, one between Kenya and Uganda and another to supply five countries with oil products from a Ugandan refinery.

The Ethiopian oil market, which had for years been dominated by the foreign based Total, Mobil, Agip and Shell, has recently been penetrated by the Kenyan Kobil and the Sudanese Nile Oil, and now the Libyan OiLibya.

PetrolWorld  241108

  August 2008   Libya Oil Holdings Acquires Shell Fuel Distribution Networks