Just after a midnight deadline that could have seen a complete shutdown of oil and gas production, Norwegian Labor Minister Hanne Bjurstroem said that the government had been forced to intervene.

"I had to make this decision to protect Norway's vital interests. It wasn't an easy choice, but I had to do it," Bjurstroem told Reuters after a last-ditch meeting with trade unions and the Norwegian oil industry association (OLF).

Norwegian law allows the government to force striking workers back to duty, if it believes there is a threat to safety or the national interest, and it has used these powers in the past. However, until the threat of a total shutdown loomed imminently, the Labor-led coalition had been reticent to do so.

Leif Sande, leader of the largest labor union Industri Energi, said the workers would return to work immediately. "It's very sad. The strike is over," he told journalists. The dispute is now set to go into a process of arbitration.

Prompt restart planned

State-controlled Statoil, which dominates the sector, said it planned an immediate resumption of all production. It had previously warned that - if it were forced into a lockout - it would be unable to honor existing contracts.

Oil accounts for roughly half of Norway's exports and offshore workers enjoy the highest salaries of any of their contemporaries across the world - a salary of some $180,000 (146,000 euros).

While the employees work for only 16 weeks in the year, they say that tough working conditions mean they should be able to retire early at 62. That age is three years before the legal retirement age in the field and five years before the national retirement age.

"It may take from 1 to 2 days to get production started and Statoil expects to have the fields back in full production within a week," the company said in a statement.

The last lockout was in 1986. A center-right conservative government stepped in to avert a lockout in 2004. In all, some 6,500 workers work on 70 extraction fields out at sea.

Norwaycurrently delivers 27 percent of all German gas imports, making the Scandinavian country the second most important supplier after Russia.

rc/slk (AFP, Reuters)