Rivals in Libya’s War Agree to Bolster Oil-Facility Guards
Warning to Veteran Politicians as Libya Talks Fail to Yield Government
(Bloomberg) -- Rivals in Libya’s civil war agreed to bolster a paramilitary unit formed to protect energy infrastructure, a step that could help sustain the recent surge in the nation’s oil production.
The chairman of the state energy company, the National Oil Corp., traveled to the eastern port city of Brega to discuss the Petroleum Facilities Guard with Libya’s two main warring factions, who are observing a cease-fire.
The Guard was designed as a neutral force to defend oil ports and fields. But its members contributed to a crash in Libyan crude output at the start of the year by blockading some installations on behalf of various groups and as they sought to press their own demands.
Representatives of the United Nations-recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj and of Khalifa Haftar, a commander backed by Russia and Egypt, provisionally agreed to unify the Guard and put it under the leadership of the NOC, Mustafa Sanalla, the company’s chairman, told reporters in Brega on Monday.
The restructuring of the Guard is important “because Libyans have only one source of revenues and that’s oil,” Sanalla told Libyan television earlier. “The stability of this sector is very, very important to Libya. It’s very important for the investors and foreign companies to return to Libya.”
Libya’s oil production has soared since the blockade was lifted in September from less than 100,000 barrels a day to more than 1.1 million. While that’s weighed on oil prices at a time when the coronavirus is sapping energy demand, traders have questioned how sustainable the revival is and whether the truce in the war will hold.
The OPEC member, home to Africa’s largest crude reserves, aims to boost daily output to 1.3 million barrels by the beginning of 2021 and to 1.6 million by the end of the year, Sanalla said last month. Achieving that will depend on the NOC getting enough money from the government to repair damaged and neglected infrastructure, he said.
The Brega meeting came after UN-brokered talks in Tunisia ended over the weekend without the formation of a unity government to lead Libya into elections scheduled for December 2021. A virtual meeting will take place in about a week to continue the discussions, the UN said.
The Tunisian talks were part of a broad push to seal a peace deal. Libya’s fighting has raged for much of the period since former dictator Muammar Qaddafi was ousted in 2011, shattering the economy and displacing tens of thousands of people.
“Ten years of conflict cannot be resolved in one week,” Stephanie Williams, the UN’s acting envoy to Libya, said on Sunday in Tunis. “We still have a lot of work to do. The participants must soldier on.”
Sarraj, who Turkey has backed with troops and arms, and Haftar are also negotiating how to share oil revenue and demilitarize the frontlines near the central city of Sirte. Plenty of differences remain, including over who should be allowed to serve in the transitional government and when foreign mercenaries should leave the country.
Williams said the war’s protagonists needed to accept change and be flexible.
“The dinosaurs became extinct, and political dinosaurs risk the same fate if they don’t prove themselves to be relevant,” Williams said.
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