Category: Libya

Oil production at the major Sharara field in the west of Libya has risen to 205,000 b/d, a senior official at Libya’s state-owned NOC said Monday, but there are no signs of any significant increase in crude exports from the troubled North African country. Output at the 350,000 b/d Sharara field restarted on Saturday after protesters at the facility agreed to halt their blockade. The field had been shut in by protests and strike action since the end of October, with production having been disrupted on and off by strikes since June. NOC executive board member Mustafa Sanalla told Platts Monday: "Today production is 205,000 b/d from Sharara." Operated by Akakus, a joint venture between NOC and Spain’s Repsol, Sharara is one of Libya’s major onshore oil fields and feeds the 230,000 b/d Zawiya crude export terminal, Libya’s second-largest. While the terminal has been […]

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Oil production at the major Sharara field in the west of Libya has risen to 205,000 b/d, a senior official at Libya’s state-owned NOC said Monday, but there are no signs of any significant increase in crude exports from the troubled North African country. Output at the 350,000 b/d Sharara field restarted on Saturday after protesters at the facility agreed to halt their blockade. The field had been shut in by protests and strike action since the end of October, with production having been disrupted on and off by strikes since June. NOC executive board member Mustafa Sanalla told Platts Monday: "Today production is 205,000 b/d from Sharara." Operated by Akakus, a joint venture between NOC and Spain’s Repsol, Sharara is one of Libya’s major onshore oil fields and feeds the 230,000 b/d Zawiya crude export terminal, Libya’s second-largest. While the terminal has been […]

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A Defense Ministry official says Libya’s navy has prevented a Malta-flagged oil tanker from entering its territorial waters apparently en route to a militia that has shut down oil terminals for months in a challenge to the government. Spokesman Abdul-Razak al-Shabahi told The Associated Press on Monday that the tanker tried to enter the northeastern city of Misrata’s port the previous night. He says the tanker and its cargo were not meant for the government. Libya’s eastern militia is demanding more autonomy from the government in Tripoli and a share of oil revenues. Last summer, its fighters shut down most of the country’s terminals and mediation has failed. The government has threatened to use force if the militia attempts to bring in oil before the standoff is resolved. © 2014 The Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten […]

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Libya hopes it can restart production at one of its largest oil fields, El Sharara, operated by Repsol SA, in two to three days after protesters agreed to end their two-month stoppage of the facility, the spokesman of the state-owned National Oil Corp. said Thursday. "The protesters agreed to end their blockage of the field…so if they fulfill their promise and leave the field completely, we can restart operations again within two to three days," Mohamed al-Harari told The Wall Street Journal. "We are […]

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Libya’s oil production was at 250,000 barrels per day as of December 25, according to an oil ministry statement on Thursday and carried by the state news agency LANA, and while that is up slightly from 224,000 at the end of November it is down sharply from July. Gas output was at 1.928 million cubic feet on December 25, the oil ministry said. The agency did not provide additional details. A mix of militias, tribesmen and political minorities, which are demanding a greater share of Libya’s oil wealth and more political power, have shut most oilfields and ports, cutting oil output from the 1.4 million bpd in July. The seizures have also cut Libya’s oil exports to 110,000 barrels a day from more than one million in July. Libya’s oil and gas industry association said on Tuesday it was optimistic the government would soon reach an agreement […]

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Libya should use force to reopen oil ports closed since July by a tribal autonomy movement, the country’s oil minister said Saturday, confirming that closed Marsa al-Hariga terminal near Tobruk will resume shipments soon. "This is my opinion as an oil minister…force should be used," Abdelbari al-Arusi said on the sidelines of an energy meeting in Doha, but he didn’t say when such action might be taken. Libya, which is currently producing around 250,000 barrels a day, could struggle to regain its market share once it restores output to 1.6 million barrels a day, he said. Earlier this month, government officials and lawmakers said an agreement had been reached between tribal leaders to reopen the port in exchange for greater regional oversight of oil exports. But on Sunday Ibrahim al-Jathran, the leader of a large militia that is blocking several ports, said his group wouldn’t reopen […]

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For the first time since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, the independent militias that dominated Libya’s biggest cities and sometimes cowed the central government have fled from the streets, chased away by a combination of civilian protesters and armed groups. But instead of a triumph for the transitional government of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, the retreat has marked a new stage in Libya’s descent into chaos. In Tripoli, the capital, the government is now struggling to fill the vacuum left by the sudden disappearance of the militias, which had controlled scores of government facilities and private properties. In Benghazi, it has been unable to slow an escalating campaign of assassinations and bombings that are believed to be the work of extremist militiamen who have gone underground; now the attacks are targeting the unit that passes for the government’s only security force. And where […]

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Libya’s deadlocked oil crisis, with rebel warlords refusing to reopen blockaded oil terminals along the Mediterranean coast, is causing jitters on international energy markets as oil exports are reduced to a trickle. The beleaguered government of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said last week that the export terminals in the eastern cities of Ras Lanuf, Es Sider and Zueitina, which account for 60 percent of Libya’s oil exports, would reopen Sunday. But rebel chieftain Ibrahim Jedran, who once commanded the 30,000-strong Petroleum Facilities Guard assigned to protect the very facilities he has shut down for months, refused to allow them to resume operations until the Tripoli government recognizes eastern Libya as an autonomous region. Eastern Libya, known as Cyrenaica, holds most of the North African country’s oil reserves of 76.4 billion barrels, the largest in Africa and the fifth largest in the world. "International […]

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A Libyan rebel leader refused to hand over control of three oil ports to the government, keeping a lid on the North African nation’s crude sales in a development that shored up international prices. Ibrahim Al Jedran told a news conference yesterday that the oil export terminals of Es Sider, Ras Lanuf and Zueitina, closed since the end of July, will remain shut after the authorities rejected his conditions, including a demand to share oil revenue with his self-proclaimed government in the east. “We failed in making our conditions implemented, so we confirm that we won’t open the oil ports,” he said, speaking in the eastern city of Ajdabiya. “We now officially mandate the Executive Bureau of the Cyrenaica Region to start what it has been tasked with and preserve this wealth,” he said, signaling that the eastern region known as Cyrenaica may […]

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The six-month shutdown of Libya’s oil industry by rogue militias and disgruntled tribesmen has forced the government to dip into the country’s foreign reserves, a move that will likely exacerbate the political turmoil that led to the shutdown if no settlement is soon found. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said he expects three Libyan oil ports on the Mediterranean to reopen Sunday, allowing vital exports to resume, restoring the flow of state revenues. This followed negotiations with tribal leaders in the east, the crucible of the unrest that followed the fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in August 2011. But Ibrahim Jadran, the charismatic warlord in eastern Libya where 60 percent of the country’s oil is, said that won’t happen unless the government meets his demands for a larger share of oil revenue for the increasingly lawless region and more political power. Zeidan flatly […]

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