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By Callum Paton.
Tripoli, 19 February 2014:
National Oil Corporation (NOC) subsidiary the Arab Gulf Oil Company (AGOCO) has made a new oil . . .[restrict]and gas discovery in the Ghadames Basin, 200km south of Tripoli.
The spokesman for the NOC, Mohammed Al-Harrari, told the Libya Herald that exploratory testing at the site had returned production results of 1,266 barrels per day of oil and 2.9 million cubic feet of gas.
He said a great deal more drilling and testing would need to be done before production could begin but the preliminary indications were good.
Head of information at AGOCO, Abdeljalil Mayuf, said the successful exploration represented an “important discovery”.
National oil production levels have fallen again to 370,000 b/d according to the NOC. Harrari attributed the decrease of 18,000 b/d to maintenance work but production levels have been slashed over the past week by the partial blockade of a pipeline carrying oil from the Sharara oilfield, causing a 60-percent cut in flow to the Zawia refinery and oil terminal.
The figures are a substantial decline on production of 600,000 b/d reported a week ago, let alone the levels of 1.5 million b/d in 2012, following the revolution. [/restrict]
