Tripoli, 28 April
Further talks this afternoon with demonstrators who have been blockading the Benghazi headquarters of Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco) . . .[restrict]for the last six days, again failed to persuade them to disperse.
Throughout the week, senior officials from the country’s biggest oil company and civic leaders have been negotiating with the protestors, none of whom is actually an Agoco employee.
The demonstrators have stuck to a range of demands which include greater transparency over government spending and appointments, the creation of jobs for young unemployed and the firing of top officials from the Qaddafi era, who are still in post.
More than a thousand people work in the Al-Qish complex which was sealed off by between 30 and 50 protestors, some of them armed, on Monday. A tent has been erected by the main entrance.
No employees are trapped in the buildings, said Agoco spokesman Abdeljalil Mayuf today. Staff have been working out of the two annexes the company also has in Benghazi. The demonstrators have allowed people into the buildings to collect belongings, on condition that they do no work inside.
Mayuf told Libya Herald that for the present there was no danger of Agoco’s field operations being disrupted, but clearly, he said, in the longer term problems would arise.
On Thursday, Deputy Oil Minister Omar Shakmak told Reuters: “There is no doubt that stopping the work inside the administration of the company which supports the oilfields will affect the employees in these oilfields.” [/restrict]
