Libya’s National Petroleum Company (NOC) announced on Sunday the suspension of production at a major oil field in the south-west of the country after individuals prevented employees from accessing it, amid political chaos.
“On Saturday, April 16, 2022, at 6:30 p.m., a group of individuals repeatedly attempted to forcibly stop production at al-Fil field by preventing employees from working,” the NOC said in a statement on Sunday, without specify the identity of the disruptors or their motivations. Production having “completely ceased on Sunday”, making it “impossible to respect the Company’s contractual commitments”, the NOC then decreed, “until further notice”, a state of force majeure on the delivery of crude to the Mellitah complex. , located on the coast, not far from the border with Tunisia.
Invoked in exceptional circumstances, the state of force majeure allows exemption from liability of the NOC in the event of non-compliance with oil delivery contracts. The al-Fil field, located in the Morzouq basin 750 kilometers southwest of Tripoli, is managed by the joint venture Mellitah Oil & Gas, between the NOC and the Italian giant Eni. Some 70,000 barrels are usually produced there every day, out of an estimated production of 1.2 million barrels per day on average, but which fluctuates greatly according to tensions on the ground.
Institutional crisis
Libya, which has the most abundant reserves in Africa, is struggling to extricate itself from more than a decade of chaos since the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. This closure comes the day after the announcement made by ” a group of citizens from southern Libya to halt production at al-Fil field, “until the government appointed by parliament takes office in the capital”, according to the Libyan News Agency Lana.
The North African country is in the throes of a major political crisis, with two rival prime ministers vying for power.
In February, the parliament sitting in the east appointed former interior minister Fathi Bachagha as the new head of government. But the latter has still not succeeded in ousting the executive in place in Tripoli led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, plunging the country into an institutional crisis reminiscent of the darkest hours of the civil war.