TRIPOLI: Libya’s oil production is currently nearly 400,000 barrels a day, the oil minister in one of the country’s rival governments which controls Tripoli, said yesterday.
Mashallah Zwai also said that power cuts in the country had not affected oil output. Authorities shut down Libya’s biggest steel firm this week due to power shortages after fighting and lack of spare parts disrupted the power grid. Much of eastern Libya has had electricity only sporadically in the past week.
Libya’s oil output had been previously put by industry sources at between 400,000 b/d and 450,000 b/d. This is a quarter of what Libya used to pump before an uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Since then the oil and gas industry has been hit by strikes, protests, fighting of rival armed groups and locals making political and financial demands. The country’s two biggest oil ports Es Sider and Ras Lanuf have been closed since December.
Zwai also said that tribal elders were still mediating to end the blockage of a pipeline feeding the 340,000 b/d-El Sharara oilfield in the southwest of the country.
“Hopefully the pipeline will be reopened within a month though these efforts,” Zwai said. An armed group from Zintan in the western mountains which opposes the Tripoli rival government has blocked the pipeline since November.
The Zintanis have demanded a force loyal to Tripoli to leave the field. The pipeline is also linked to the El Feel oilfield, which has been closed by a separate strike by security forces.
More than half of Libya’s output comes from the eastern state oil firm AGOCO, a subsidiary of the national oil firm NOC. It runs the Hariga port and the Sarir field, the country’s biggest. AGOCO had last put its production at 220,000 b/d.
Reuters
