Production at Libya’s largest oil field resumes after agreement with pro-Haftar group
LIBYA’S Sharara oil field, the country’s largest, resumed production Monday after compelling reasons were eliminated, the oil field’s administration said.
The administration said in a statement on Libya’s Al-Ahrar TV that “the first stages of pumping the general stock in from the field’s main pumping station to the Ras Lanuf oil port” had begun.
The oil field said that its operations would raise Libya’s production to about 350,000 barrels per day (bpd).
On Sept. 18, putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar announced the lifting of a blockade from oil fields and facilities, including Sharara, after a nine-month closure.
On Thursday, the Libyan Central Bank said that the country’s losses due to the closure of oil facilities totaled about $10 billion.
The statement also noted that authorities have instructed the Akakus Company in charge of inspecting the oil field to proceed with production in line with public safety and security standards following the closure by Haftar’s forces.
Libya’s National Oil Company (NOC) had recently announced that the compelling reasons behind the field’s closure were eliminated after forging an agreement with the militant group called “The Guardians of the Oil Facilities.”
Last month the U.S. announced that Haftar has agreed to lift the blockade on oil controlled by his forces.
Powerful tribes in eastern Libya loyal to Haftar have kept export terminals closed and choked off major pipelines since the start of the year in a move aimed at putting pressure on their rivals in the United Nations-supported Government of National Accord (GNA), based in the capital Tripoli.
Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and the ninth-biggest known reserves in the world.
LIBYA’S INTERESTS TO BE VALUED
Meanwhile, the United Nations’ Libya envoy Stephanie Williams on Monday encouraged rival parties to place national interests above political ambitions when they meet next month for talks aimed at ending a decade of civil war.
Neighboring Tunisia is set to host talks in early November that will include representatives of civil society, tribesmen, political leaders and members of bodies representing both administrations.
“What we want to see in terms of participation is people who are not there for their own political aspirations, but for their country,” Williams said after meeting Tunisian President Kais Saied.
Asked whether Haftar or the head of the
GNA, Fayez Sarraj, would be present, she said participants would be able to take part on the condition “that they remove themselves from consideration in high government positions.”
This includes membership in the key Presidential Council, the prime minister’s job and ministerial posts, she told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The talks are intended to prepare the country for national elections, she added.
Tunisia’s Foreign Minister Othman Jerandi called for “a dialogue between Libyans that could lead to a political solution to the crisis.”
The Tunis talks will begin on Oct. 26 by videoconference before continuing face-toface in early November.
Saied spoke Monday with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who saluted the renewed dialogue and said that
Algeria, another neighbor of Libya, was “always at Tunisia’s side.”
Tebboune also spoke of a visit to Tunisia after the Nov. 1 referendum on constitutional reform in Algeria.
The Algerian president’s office confirmed that the two men had spoken via telephone.
“The President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, received a telephone call on the part of his counterpart Kais Saied, and they reviewed bilateral relations and his planned visit to Tunisia,” it said in a statement.
Tebboune “welcomed Tunisia’s organisation of inter-Libyan dialogue under the auspices of the UN,” the statement said.
A previous agreement between rival Libyan sides, signed in Morocco in 2015, created a unity government that was never recognized by Haftar.