Libya dinar slides more amid continued political deadlock

Hariga oil port resumes work

BENGHAZI, Libya, July 20, (AP): Libya’s dinar has plunged to a new low on the black market amid continued political deadlock in this oil-rich country.

Traders were selling the dinar Wednesday from between 5.0 and 5.30 to the dollar, a sharp decline from nearly 4 Libyan dinars to the dollar in March. The official rate is 1.58.

The downward spiral is rooted in the depletion of foreign currency in Libya after a sharp drop in oil production from 1.6 million barrels a day in 2011 to less than 400,000 barrels a day.

Oil is the country’s main source of revenues. Militias control oil fields, pipelines, and oil terminals. After the 2011 ouster and killing of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, Libya slid into chaos, and subsequent political turmoil left the country split between two competing governments.

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Oil exports from the eastern Libyan terminal of Hariga have resumed after a pay protest by guards ended, but production at the major eastern oil field of Sarir would remain suspended, officials said on Wednesday.

Port director Yassin Ahmed said a Maltese-flagged tanker had docked at Hariga after guards had been promised two years of unpaid wages, and a tanker had docked to load 76,000 tonnes of crude.

The closure of Hariga, which has an export capacity of about 120,000 barrels per day (bpd), had stopped production at the Sarir field.

But Omran al-Zwai, spokesman for Libya’s eastern state oil firm AGOCO, said production at Sarir would be remain suspended until AGOCO received money for equipment and to pay off debts.

Sarir previously had an output of 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Zwai also said that production at the Messla field risked being reduced from 70,000 barrels to 30,000 barrels because of storage constraints.

No one at the National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli was immediately available to confirm the impact on national production, but labour disputes, security problems and political strife have already slashed Libyan oil output to a fraction of former levels.

Production has been hovering at less than a quarter of the 1.6 million bpd the OPEC member was pumping five years ago.

Zwai did not give details of how much money the firm was seeking, but AGOCO has complained repeatedly that it lacks resources to restore degraded equipment.

The protest at Hariga was by members of Libya’s Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) who had travelled from another oil installation in eastern Libya to press their case.