Canada’s Serinus Energy has announced that production at Tunisia’s Sabria and El-Franig fields has been shut down after they became the latest industrial operation to fall victim to the wave of worker protests that has plagued the country since its 2011 revolution.

Serinus said protesters angry about lack of development and jobs in the region initially targeting the El-Franig field, which is operated by the London-headquartered Perenco and located immediately to the north of Sabria.

While the protesters focused on stopping operations at El-Franig and blocking roads in the area Serinus workers shutdown the Sabria field wells in a controlled manner and evacuated staff from the field’s central processing facility, according to a statement released by Serinus on 1 June.

Serinus says that head of the shutdown the field was producing 1,550 barrels of oil-equivalent a day (boe/d) and it is yet to be in a position to provide guidance on when production will resume

Serinus is the operator of the Sabria field and holds a 45 per cent stake in the asset through its subsidiary Winstar Tunisia.

The remaining 55 per cent is held by the state-owned energy company Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activites Petrolieres (Etap).

Commenting on the shutdown the CEO of Serinus, Tim Elliott said, “we understand there is a level of frustration since the revolution, forcing the closure of producing fields will in the short term not help the situation and in the long term will damage the image of Tunisia and deter much needed foreign investment”.

The shutdown of the Sabria and El-Franig fields comes after Tunisia’s state-run phosphate miner, Gafsa Phosphate, suspended production due to protests in mid-May and after the UK-listed energy company Petrofac was forced to shut down its operations at the Kerkennah gas field in Tunisia due to protests in April.