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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 25 December 2021:
Libya’s state National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced Saturday that the general revenue for December 2020 of sales of crude oil, gas, condensates, petroleum products and petrochemicals have reached a record level of US$ 1.1 bn (1,115,210,431.95).
It said the amount is deposited in its Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB) account in line with the ‘‘current arrangements’’.
The ‘‘current arrangements’’ refers to the political agreement, the Maetig-Hafter agreement for the resumption of oil production/exports. This agreement entailed that Hafter would lift the oil blockage imposed by Hafter/allies in return for the revenues being frozen in the NOC’s LFB account until political agreement is reached on a number of issues including the equitable distribution of Libya’s oil revenues.
The NOC pointed out that these revenues do not include taxes, royalties, and payments have been made for natural gas purchases to the domestic market from Waha Oil’s partners, which amounted to 13.6 U.S. million dollars.
NOC chairman, Mustafa Sanalla, said” The NOC and its companies and its workers have struggled in various areas of its operations over the past months to achieve this income by increasing production rates at record times’’, however, he warned that ‘‘January exports will decrease due to the reduction of Waha Oil Company’s production by 200,000 barrels per day until the completion of the maintenance works. Also, maintenance teams are seeking to reduce the expected duration to the minimum limits, all due to the lack of budgets related to the maintenance of the NOC’s assets, which reflects negatively on the revenues of January.’’
Sanalla added, “Despite the confusion and bureaucracy of some decision-making circles in the state, on monetizing the urgent budgets that are still pending, the NOC will deal with these challenges out of its sense of responsibility towards the average citizen and urge the other state institutions to be responsible and implement wise measures for the service of the nation.”
