By Sami Zaptia.
London, 24 April 2021:
Libya’s oil production has recently declined to one million barrels per day (bpd) down from 1.3 million bpd and could decline much less in the coming days.
The warning was made Wednesday by National Oil Corporation (NOC) chairman Mustafa Sanalla during his meeting with Oil Minister Mohamad Aoun at NOC headquarters in Tripoli.
Sanalla said that the oil sector in Libya has enormous human potential that enables it to raise the level of daily production of oil to a level above 2 million bpd in the near period, but the lack of approval of the necessary budgets for the sector prevented it from reaching that.
He said the matter has worsened to the point where some companies are forced to stop production due to the lack of spare parts and necessary operating materials, in addition to the low health and catering services, weak salaries of workers in the sector, and months of delay for service companies.
Sanalla said the production drop was due to its subsidiaries were drowning in debt and their inability to continue production as a result of the technical problems that threaten Safety of operations due to the failure to approve the necessary budgets and not to liquidate less than 2% of the budget. He called on the Ministry of Oil to provide the required budgets from the government so that the NOC can achieve its production targets by the end of the current year.
Sanalla also called on the Oil Ministry to facilitate the speeding up and prioritization of the provision of vaccines to all workers in the oil sector, explaining that the sector suffers from deterioration in health services for some companies and their complete absence in service companies, due to the lack of budgets, stressing the need to put an end to this exacerbating situation.
He called on the Oil Minister to implement the salary increase decision for the sector, in line with the rest of the state’s sectors that have had their salaries increased.
Sanalla said, “The National Oil Corporation has carried out several studies and developed comprehensive development plans, but the lack of the necessary budgets and the delay in adopting them many times prevented this, and the complex routine procedures of some state agencies prevented the implementation of these projects.
In addition to the lack of approval of budgets cast a shadow over the lack of fuel of all kinds in the local market and led to the failure to rebuild fuel tanks on the Tripoli International Airport road, whose tanks were mostly destroyed due to the wars that took place in Tripoli in the years 2014-2018-2019-2020, which caused crises in gas station supplies, which is one of the problems that we suffer from today.’’
“What we hope now from the Ministry of Oil is to work to help us obtain the necessary budgets, and I say that unless all capabilities are harnessed for the oil sector, unfortunately the situation will deteriorate.”
Sanalla also noted that the lack of financial resources that led to the difficulty of developing some onshore and offshore fields and disrupting other important projects such as gas projects in offshore areas and the negative impact of that on the electricity sector during the next three years.
He also explained the repeated security breaches in the Mellitah complex, attacks on public facilities and properties, theft of oils at the Zawiya refinery, and the humiliation of its workers.
