Nigeria’s oil unions suspended their four-day national strike after reaching an agreement with the government, which included a push to pass an industry bill held up for years in parliament.

“The strike is suspended and there are promises to resolve the issues we tabled before them,” Emmanuel Ojugbana, a spokesman for the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, or Pengassan, said by phone from the capital, Abuja. “We have given them timelines at which time if it is not done we will go back to our action.”

Pengassan, comprised of management-level employees, and the affiliate blue-collar Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers representing at least 30,000 workers, reached an accord with the government’s negotiation team led by Labour Minister Kabiru Turaki, Babatunde Oke, another Pengassan spokesman in Lagos, the commercial capital, said by phone.

Workers were protesting the failure of the government of Africa’s biggest crude producer to fix refineries and cut gasoline prices in line with the slump in crude. The two unions also wanted the authorities to expedite the passage of the petroleum industry bill, curtail crude theft and pipeline sabotage, and address what they say are unfair labor practices by some energy producers.

“We have requested the minister to assist us to press home our demand for immediate passage of that bill between now and end of the first quarter of 2015,” said Ojugbana. “We are hopeful that actions will be taken.”

Economic Impact

At least 80% of Nigeria’s crude is pumped by Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Total and Eni in joint ventures with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. Oil prices have fallen 45% this year, with Brent crude, which compares with Nigeria’s benchmark Bonny Light, trading at $60.82 a barrel as of 3:44 p.m. in London, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The strike didn’t have much of an impact on the economy,” Dolapo Oni, the Lagos-based head of energy research at Ecobank Transnational Inc., said by phone Dec. 19. “They didn’t touch oil exports. While some workers from Total and Chevron joined the strike, the field staff on the various production platforms continued to work so the strike didn’t affect oil operations.”

The impact of the strike was restricted to domestic fuel supply, Pengassan President Francis Johnson said Dec. 16.

The NNPC said Dec. 15 that domestic fuel supplies wouldn’t be disrupted by the strike and the West African nation has more than 32 days of oil-product stockpiles. Ohi Alegbe, Abuja-based spokesman for the NNPC and the oil minister Diezani Alison- Madueke, didn’t answer two calls to his mobile phones seeking comment.

“Even before the strike, there were already issues with fuel scarcity due to NNPC’s inability to evacuate enough fuel cargoes out of the Apapa port,” Ecobank’s Oni, said referring to the port in Lagos. “The strike in itself didn’t create much scarcity.”