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Since the 2011 revolution Libya’s enormous oil resources, the largest in Africa, have become a major the source of a major headache for the country.
Valerie Stocker, Libya analyst at energy consulting firm Horizon Client Access, writes exclusively for Pipeline Magazine looking at who controls Libya’s oil.
Water makes men work; oil makes men dream, is a quote famously attributed to King Idriss as- Senussi, the monarch who lead Libya from independence in 1951 until Colonel Moammar Gaddafi overthrew him in a coup d’etat in 1969.
Yet in the years since the 2011 revolution ended four decades of Gaddhafi’s chaotic rule, Libya’s enormous oil resources – the largest in Africa – have become the source of nightmares. Tasked with guiding the country from dictatorship to democracy, Libya’s weak central government lacks the monopoly of force needed to manage the country’s poorly exploited resources. In the eastern Cyrenaica region, known as Barqa to the locals, a group of pro-federalist militants seized Libya’s four major oil terminals last July, forcing the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation (NOC) to declare force majeure and halt virtually all exports.
Before the revolution, Libya averaged an export volume of 1.6 million barrels of crude per day. Although exports had surprisingly recovered to pre-war levels by 2012, they have since slumped to less than 500,000 barrels per day, exported mainly from the lesser explored and under-developed oil and gas basins in the southwest Libyan desert and off the Tripolitanian coast.
A slogan the authorities plastered on billboards to remind citizens of their fortune, “oil is our weapon,” has now taken on a new, ominous meaning. For Libya’s disgruntled militia leaders freedom is equivalent to power and power is proportional to the strength of your weapons.
Extortion has become the most efficient way to obtain political or material gains and all sorts of protest groups benefit from the prevailing lawlessness to press for their demands, whether these are minority rights, wage increases or job opportunities. These types of actions are only encouraged by the government’s penchant for negotiation. While the government in Tripoli recognises that by engaging in dialogue it reinforces a dangerous precedent, the hope is that day-to-day crisis management can temporarily de-escalate conflicts and keep the peace until more robust institutions are created.
Since the 2011 revolution Libya’s enormous oil resources, the largest in Africa, have become a major the source of a major headache for the country.
Valerie Stocker, Libya analyst at energy consulting firm Horizon Client Access, writes exclusively for Pipeline Magazine looking at who controls Libya’s oil.
Water makes men work; oil makes men dream, is a quote famously attributed to King Idriss as- Senussi, the monarch who lead Libya from independence in 1951 until Colonel Moammar Gaddafi overthrew him in a coup d’etat in 1969.
Yet in the years since the 2011 revolution ended four decades of Gaddhafi’s chaotic rule, Libya’s enormous oil resources – the largest in Africa – have become the source of nightmares. Tasked with guiding the country from dictatorship to democracy, Libya’s weak central government lacks the monopoly of force needed to manage the country’s poorly exploited resources. In the eastern Cyrenaica region, known as Barqa to the locals, a group of pro-federalist militants seized Libya’s four major oil terminals last July, forcing the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation (NOC) to declare force majeure and halt virtually all exports.
Before the revolution, Libya averaged an export volume of 1.6 million barrels of crude per day. Although exports had surprisingly recovered to pre-war levels by 2012, they have since slumped to less than 500,000 barrels per day, exported mainly from the lesser explored and under-developed oil and gas basins in the southwest Libyan desert and off the Tripolitanian coast.
A slogan the authorities plastered on billboards to remind citizens of their fortune, “oil is our weapon,” has now taken on a new, ominous meaning. For Libya’s disgruntled militia leaders freedom is equivalent to power and power is proportional to the strength of your weapons.
Extortion has become the most efficient way to obtain political or material gains and all sorts of protest groups benefit from the prevailing lawlessness to press for their demands, whether these are minority rights, wage increases or job opportunities. These types of actions are only encouraged by the government’s penchant for negotiation. While the government in Tripoli recognises that by engaging in dialogue it reinforces a dangerous precedent, the hope is that day-to-day crisis management can temporarily de-escalate conflicts and keep the peace until more robust institutions are created.
