By Libya Herald staff.
Benghazi, 28 March 2014:
Alrahila Oil Services Company, one of the country’s main petrol station operators, is . . .[restrict]to move its headquarters back to Benghazi. The decision was made by the board of directors after a series of meetings, the company’s chairman, Abdel-Atti Arrafadi, has said.
The most recent meeting this week discussed the logistics of the return, Libyan news agency LANA reported. It would be gradual, Arrafadi is quoted as stating, so as not to disrupt the company’s operations.
Alrahila was moved to Tripoli by the former regime. The announcement of the return follows the government’s decision last May and then formalized in June that the National Oil Corporation (NOC) would go back to Benghazi.
Even before that announcement was made, it was widely anticipated that the move would result in oil-related companies currently headquartered in Tripoli moving east. Alrahila is the first to announce it is doing so.
A site would be purchased to build new Benghazi headquarters, according to Alrahila’s director of the eastern region, Abdel-Razaq Alshalmani, adding that the company’s management was united in its decision to move. At present, however, the main problem in the east, he said, was a scarcity of fuel tankers to deliver petrol and of enough fuel pumps at petrol stations.
Of the 190 petrol stations across Libya, the eastern region, from Ajdabiya and Musaid, has 50, of which 16 are in Benghazi, he said. The company looking to increase these as well as develop other services including supplying fuel to ships at ports and aircraft at airports. [/restrict]
