By Sami Zaptia.
London, 15 March 2021:
Libya’s state National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced yesterday that the country’s oil revenues for February were US$ 1,235,710,353.98.
The NOC reported that the revenues were deposited into its Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB) in line with the temporary arrangements in force (the Maetig-Hafter Agreement) that, the NOC said, ended with the formation of the Government of National Unity, which won parliamentary confidence recently.
In this regard, NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla, commented: “It is my pleasure, on my own behalf, and on behalf of the Board of Directors of the National Oil Corporation and its subsidiaries, to congratulate the honourable Libyan people on the occasion of the Government of National Unity gaining confidence from the Libyan Parliament, and I pray to Allah that it will be the beginning of a new phase that achieves the hopes and aspirations of the Libyan nation.”
Sanalla added, “I was honoured today to meet Mr. Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba, Prime Minister of the GNU at his headquarters in the capital, Tripoli, and his speech was clear and frank in his support for the NOC and its affiliates in order to achieve its goals of increasing production and achieving greater revenues to support the national economy.
In a related context, Sanalla said, “The National Oil Corporation is looking forward to working with the Ministry of Oil and Gas and expanding the capabilities of the Libyan oil resources. He added, “The sovereign role represented in chairing the Minister of Oil and Gas, Engineer Mohamed Emhemmed Aoun, the delegation of the State of Libya to OPEC in ministerial meetings and in other international forums is an important and vital matter. The state of Libya must be among the leading countries in the oil industry.”
The NOC said that Prime Minister Aldabaiba had given instructions to begin building a stock of liquid fuel in power plants, drinking water desalination plants and fuel distribution stations in all NOC warehouses in various regions of the country, in preparation to meet the increasing consumption during the blessed month of Ramadan and to mitigate the suffering of all citizens in all parts of the country.
The NOC announced that “the cumulative total of oil revenues withheld (in its LFB account) since the lifting of the status of force majeure until the date of March 10, 2021, amounted to US$ 7,767,439,801.73 including the rights of partners and the rights of NOC but do not include royalties and taxes.”