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By Libya Herald Staff.
Tripoli, 3 October 2013:
Libyan oil production has risen to 700,000 barrels a day according to Oil Minister Abdulbari . . .[restrict]Al-Arousi. Speaking at a conference in London yesterday, he also said that the country could resume full capacity crude production once the oil terminal and oil field strikes end.
The problems were political, he said, not technical – due primarily to demands from the Cyrenaica Federalists for greater autonomy and investment.
“We’re expecting to solve this issue any time and by solving this issue we can have oil production back to 1.6 million barrels per day,” he said.
The terminals at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf are blockaded by Petroleum Facilities Guards loyal to the increasingly powerful Cyrenaica political figure Ibrahim Jadhran. However, Al-Arousi claimed that the Marsa Hariga oil terminal at Tobruk would be reopening very soon.
He did not, however, explain details of the 700,000 b/d figure, or where the increased production had occurred.
Also at the London conference, Al-Arousi said that the National Oil Corporation (NOC) was interested in buying Marathon’s stake in Waha Oil. Marathon told the NOC in July that it was considering selling its 16.3-percent stake in Waha, Libya’s largest oil company, valued as a whole at $3.5 billion.
Marathon was one of the original shareholders in Waha Oil, originally known as Oasis Oil, when it was founded in 1958. [/restrict]
