By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 14 January 2016:
IS terrorists are thought to be responsible for an attack south of Ras Lanuf which . . .[restrict]saw the kidnap of six locals as well as the destruction of a length of the pipeline. The full extent of the damage is not year clear.
The mayor of Maradah, close to which a damaged pipeline runs from the Waha field to Ras Lanuf, said that six locals had been seized by the attackers. Turkish sources have told the Libya Herald that reports that Turkish citizens had also been abducted were wrong. A diplomat said that a Turkish company, Üstay Construction, Contracting and Trading Company had been involved on the area but had withdrawn its workers last year.
The Maradah mayor said that the kidnapped men included Abdunnebi Nasr Al-Kadka, Halit Abdulbari, Omer Fayez Gaiez, Saad Yunus Zouari and Miftah Al-Zuari. It is not yet clear if these individuals were members of a local militia or part of the Petroleum Facilities Guard or oil field workers.
The National Oil Company in Tripoli had been indicating that a Greek Afrimax tanker had been loading with some 490,000 barrels of oil that remained in the Ras Lanuf storage tanks which have come under attack from IS forces. However the PFG was today claiming that it had prevented the tanker from loading. It had not been possible to contact anyone in Ibrahim Jadhran’s Ajdabiya-based PFG to confirm that that planned loading had been blocked.Tripoli sources have been claiming that the tanker had already loaded and departed.
If it does prove that IS is responsible for this assault, then it would reinforce the belief that in a desperate bid to extent its influence in advance of international air attacks IS is seeking to grab or destroy as much of the country’s oil infrastructure. [/restrict]
