By Jamal Adel.
Beida, 30 March 2015:
Despite Libyan oil production being largely omitted from the international oil traders’ calculations because of the . . .[restrict]political crisis and the effective closure of some fields because of activities of militants from the Islamic State (IS), oil is being exported in substantial quantities from the east of Libya. Two tanker-loads of oil have left Tobruk’s Hariga terminal in the past week; another is expected this week, and one tanker-load has left Zueitina.
“Yesterday an oil tanker with some 600,000 [barrels] capacity loaded with crude departed from Hariga to Italy,” AGOCO media office told the Libya Herald. The vessel is believed to be the Seadelta.
Hariga is owned and operated by state-owned oil AGOCO.
Another tanker, also headed for Italy and loaded some 130,000 barrels of crude oil left from Zueitina port on Wednesday. The port resumed exports last month.
According to AGOCO spokesman Omran Al-Zuwai, a further tanker left Hariga this morning with 400,000 and is heading to Greece.
The NOC announced last week that national oil output was now 622,000 b/d, of which, according to Zuwai, AGOCO is producing 290,000 b/d.
Italy’s giant energy and gas corporation Eni is understood to be producing some 200,000 b/d from its El Fil and Wafa fields in south west Libya, pumped to Mellitah port west of Tripoli, while some 71,000 b/d is being produced by Sirte Oil.
In addition to 11 fields in the Sirte basin closed because of IS activity, fields in the south west of the country, such as Repsol’s Sharara, are also not operating at present. Brega and Sidra terminals are likewise closed because of the attempts by Operation Sunrise to capture them. Force Majeure in relation to the two was declared last December. [/restrict]
