Tripoli—Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan on Sunday afternoon issued an ultimatum to militias blockading oil terminals and fields for months.
But a self-proclaimed autonomous group in eastern Libya announced a few hours after Zeidan’s ultimatum that it had formed a regional oil firm to start selling crude after seizing several ports.
“We have given these groups a week to ten days after which the government will exercise its functions,” said PM Zeidan at a press conference that followed and emergency meeting of the Council of Ministers in Tripoli on Sunday.
“We will not reveal what these functions are but they will be known we implemented,” he said.
Libyan citizens do not hide their desire for a strong government and now Zeidan must carry out his ultimatum to the end or he would be confirming his long-held image as a weak prime minister.
He said what has been done to the oil facilities by those who are supposed to protect them is similar to what bandits and invaders do.
The prime minister of the self-declared Cyrenaica government,
Abd-Rabbo al-Barassi, said the eastern oil firm would be based for now in Tobruk, home to the Hariga port where protesters on Friday prevented a government-chartered tanker from loading 600,000 barrels of crude bound for Italy.
"We have formed a firm called Libya Oil and Gas Corp," Barassi told Reuters by phone from the movement's headquarters in the town of Ajdabiya near the oil port of Brega.
Libya is said be losing $140 million in oil and gas revenues each day. The total of losses in money has been estimated to reach over $7 billion since the militias targeted oil terminals and oil wells.
“We will not accept that a person would seize oil fields in this manner and we will take the appropriate action,” Zeidan said.
He tried to justify his government weakness since he took over power in Libya by saying that the state can only obtain influence and authority through the support of its citizens.
But there are many in Libya who would say the citizens need see credible leadership in order to show support.
Zeidan called on the people to go out to the streets and say it clear that they want to the oil fields to be open.
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