A protest over wages that has shut the eastern Libyan oil terminal of Hariga has forced the operator of the Sarir oil field to suspend production of 100,000 barrels per day (bbl/d), an oil company spokesman said on July 19.
Omran al-Zwai, spokesman for Libya's eastern state oil firm AGOCO, said production at the Messla oil field would also be reduced to a minimum within four or five days if exports continued to be blocked from Hariga.
Exports were halted on July 17 after a group of Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) travelled to the port to protest over what they said were unpaid salaries. Two tankers have been delayed from loading as attempts are made to mediate the dispute, a port official said.
Protests, conflict and political quarrels have reduced Libya's oil production sharply since an uprising in the OPEC member five years ago. Output has been fluctuating at less than a quarter of a 2011 high of 1.6 MMbbl/d.
No one at the National Oil Corp. (NOC) in Tripoli was immediately available to comment on how the Hariga protest was affecting daily production.
Several major eastern Libyan terminals remain blockaded by the PFG, a national force that is internally divided. Key units have shifted allegiances between different political factions.
Hariga, with an export capacity of about 120,000 bbl/d, has largely continued to operate smoothly, though the NOC's eastern branch temporarily blocked exports there in May amid a dispute with the rival NOC based in Tripoli.
Recommended Reading
Exclusive: TES CEO Sees Electric Natural Gas as a Trillion Dollar Market
2024-03-26 - Marco Alverà, the co-founder and CEO of TES, details how electric natural gas from green hydrogen is a cheaper and easier to produce fuel and shares insight on its e-NG partnership with TotalEnergies, in this Hart Energy Exclusive.
CERAWeek: Human Oversight, Machine Power: AI’s Future in Energy
2024-03-22 - A CERAWeek panel tackles how AI's hunger for complexity can devour the energy industry's toughest challenges.
CERAWeek: BP Could Sanction GoM’s Kaskida this Year, CEO Says
2024-03-21 - BP Plc is eyeing the sanction of its Kaskida deepwater project in the Gulf of Mexico in 2024, the company’s CEO Murray Auchincloss said during CERAWeek by S&P Global.
CERAWeek: NOCs Balance Financial Realities, Energy Transition
2024-03-21 - National oil companies’ strategies include diversifying energy sources and seeking reserves located deeper in the ground and in deeper waters, while still working to curb emissions.