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Libyas getting better at resolving stoppages in its oil industry, underpinning a growing perception that the OPEC member is closer to becoming a stable producer again.

Thats because of the duration of the incidents. While in prior years protests could shutter fields for months and years, now the stoppages are being resolved within days and barely hindering flows. Sharara, Libyas biggest field, had several short disruptions this year, including two this month, after being closed for more than two years. Mustafa Sanalla, chairman of state-run National Oil Corp., was quick to visit Sharara this week to resolve the latest dispute, offering to revise security measures.

One fundamental change that allows upstream activities to restart quickly after a disruption is that Sanalla is willing to get on the ground, visit the sites and demonstrate his commitment to local communities, Geoff Porter, founder of New York-based North Africa Risk Consulting, said by email on Wednesday.There is a level of trust that was missing for a long time.

Libya is reviving its oil production and exports in spite of continuing political uncertainty. In July, crude production was at a four-year high and exports were the most in three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While the expansion has helped Libyas oil-dependent economy, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is trying to cut global supplies. That effort has been undermined by recovering output at OPEC members Libya and Nigeria.

Libyan production has recovered impressively and part of that is certainly that recent disruptions have proved short-lived but I still think it would be wrong to describe the oil sector as stable, Richard Mallinson, a geopolitical analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London, said Wednesday by email. There has been plenty of tension with the government in Tripoli as Sanallas requests for extra funding for maintenance and to address local issues have largely been ignored.

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The country pumped 1.6 million barrels a day before a 2011 revolt set off years of fighting between rival governments and militias. Workers at the Zueitina export terminal said last week they would not load tankers until their demands were met, including getting 20 months of back pay, union head Merhi Abridan said Saturday. The port reopened this week when workers were told their demands will be met, he said.

Under Sanallas tenure which started in May 2014, Libya has signed contracts with international companies, ended a blockade of ports, restarted exports and reopened fields, including Sharara in December following two years of closure. Oil production was at 250,000 barrels a day when he took over. In July, output was 1.02 million barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Photographer: Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

Libyas output will be about 1.2 million barrels a day by the end of the year if everything goes well, said Derek Brower, managing director of research at Petroleum Policy Intelligence, a U.K.-based consulting company, said Aug. 10 by email. However, the potential for disruptions is high and true stability can only return if locals genuinely feel like they are getting a dividend from rising oil production and income.

In July, rival leaders embarked on a new effort to reunify their country, agreeing to hold elections. "Paradoxically, the closer we get to a political solution, the more unstable production is going to become, Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting said. Political solutions create losers and in Libya, the losers will be armed."

With assistance by Angelina Rascouet

See the original post:
Libya Gets Better at Keeping Oil Flowing as Industry Stabilizes - Bloomberg

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for a senior Libyan commander who is linked to General Khalifa Haftar and who is suspected of involvement in numerous deaths in Benghazi.

During its preliminary session, the court accused Mahmoud Al-Werfalli of assisting in murders and giving orders to execute others, in seven incidents that involved 33 deaths.

In June, Libyas Al-Nabaa TV reported that Al-Karama Forces published a video showing the collective execution of 20 people following orders from Al-Orfali.

The court classified the offenses as war crimes.

The ICC document, seen by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, says:

Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf Al-Werfalli [is] allegedly responsible for murder as a war crime in the context of the non-international armed conflict in Libya.

On 18 July, the UN demanded the leadership of Al-Karama Forces to suspend Al-Orfali from his duties while investigations take place into his role in the torture of prisoners and the murder of at least ten people without trial.

Link:
Libya: ICC issues arrest warrant for Haftar ally - Middle East Monitor

Armed groups engaged in heavy fighting in Janan Atia district in Ajaylattown, some 80 kilometers west of Tripoli, on Wednesday, leaving a number of people dead and others wounded.

Local sources said the fighting first erupted between two families earlier this week, but later it intensified into heavy exchange of fire between armed groups supporting the warring families.

Many people fled their homes in panic while several buildings were damaged.

The reason of the clashes is not known, but some sources claimed it was a tribal dispute.

Ajaylatmayor Kamal Zayad said mediation efforts are being exerted to calm down the tension, demanding Tripoli-based ministries of interior and defense to intervene to stop the fighting.

The National Commission for Human Rights in Libya expressed concern over the deterioration of security situations in the town. It said in a statement, the fighting amounts to a war crime due to the use of medium and heavy weapons in densely populated areas.

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Deadly clashes in Ajaylat town - The Libya Observer

Libya is returning with more barrels to the market after its biggest oil field started raising production and an export terminal re-opened for tanker loading.

Crude oil output at Sharara--the biggest field in Libya, which is exempt from OPEC cuts--rose to 230,000 bpd on Tuesdaya 30,000 bpd increase just since Sunday, Bloomberg reports, citing an unidentified source familiar with the issue.

In another boost to Libyan oil exports, the Zueitina oil terminal resumed loading, Merhi Abridan, head of the Zueitina workers union, told Bloomberg.

The Zueitina oil terminal had ceased loading cargos on Sunday, as port workers protested, demanding better working conditions.

This meant that oil coming from the fields around Zueitina was to be stored at the port for the duration of the protest, and a spike in exports would likely follow.

As of Sunday, Bloomberg sources claim that Shararas output had fallen by 100,000 bpd over the past week, to 200,000 bpd. There had been an incident involving the theft at gunpoint of two vehicles property of Repsol, the company operating the field. Following the incident, the company advised workers to stay away from certain areas.

Libyas National Oil Corporation (NOC) said that it received on Sunday a written confirmation from Brigadier Ahmed Alal--the Commander of the forces assigned to protect and secure Al Sharara Fieldthat the incident had been carried out by a lone individual and the field was safe and secure. Related:U.S. Sanctions On Venezuela Could Boost Gasoline Prices

In recent months, factional fighting in Libya has abated, allowing the country to restore its crude oil production to over 1 million bpd for the first time in four years.

In July, average production topped 1 million bpd, as per OPEC secondary sources, with Libya raising output by 154,300 bpd from June and accounting for most of the total OPEC production increase.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Libya Boosts Oil Output At Biggest Field - OilPrice.com

Among the many civil wars ravaging the Arab world in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt the one Westerners hear the least about may prove the most dangerous: Libya. The civil war that has been raging in Libya since 2011 is, in many ways, a proxy war pitting Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood allies against the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The Qatari-Emirati rivalry, which became front-page news last week when Saudi Arabia and its allies severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, has been the significant factor in the continuation of the current Libyan Civil War, much more so than nationalistic or Islamist ideologies.

Qatar and the UAE both punch above their weight in the conflict because unlike in Yemen or Syria, the role of the United States and other major powers is somewhat muted.

At stake for both Gulf monarchies is influence in post-war Libya as well as economic opportunity. The country is home to some of the last significant underexplored oil and gas basins in the Middle East. Outside the oil sector, Qatar has financial deals with Libya that date to the Ghaddafi era. The UAE, as an early investor in Libya, has also sought controlling positions in the Libyan financial sector.

After disputed elections in 2014, Libya has once again descended into chaos, with numerous factions warring against one another. These include Berber militias, ISIS terrorists, repentant former members of Ghaddafi's military, and many other factions. Over the last three years, however, Libyan politics have been defined by three large coalitions, each claiming to be Libya's legitimate government.

The General National Congress is largely Muslim Brotherhood-influenced and is supported by Qatar. Conversely, the UAE along with Saudi Arabia now support General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA). The LNA claims to represent Libya's House of Representatives, a rival government based in Tobruk.

Both of the above factions give lip service to the Government of National Accord, the body recognized by the United Nations as Libya's legitimate government.

Both sides also have other allies, of course. Egypt also supports Haftar, and in the past the General National Congress has received support from Turkey.

Qatar has long been involved in Libyan politics and had ties to the Islamist opposition since the Ghaddaffi era. When the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 began, it supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the best organized political force in several Arab states.

Qatar was the first country to recognize the Libyan rebels and had begun sending them arms early in 2011 as they fought to topple Ghaddaffi. Media reports also suggest that Qatari special forces were deployed to Libya and at least some Libyan rebels received military training in Qatar.

The Emirates also sent weapons to rebel groups early in the conflict but failed to build lasting ties. Instead the Emirates turned to General Haftar, a supposed former CIA asset who was living in exile in Northern Virginia as recently as 2011.

In May 2014, Haftar launched a military movement to create a unified Libyan National Army (LNA) and to eliminate Islamic extremists. (Haftar's definition of extremists includes many whom others would consider moderates.) This moment set in stone the Qatar-UAE rivalry. When each nation officially backed opposing sides in the Libyan armed conflict, Bahrain, UAE, and Saudi Arabia pulled their ambassadors from Qatar's capital, Doha. The diplomats did not return for eight months.

The septuagenarian Haftar is perhaps the ablest military commander Libya has ever produced. He also makes little secret of his Neo-Ghaddaffi ambition to rule the country. Personality traits aside, his rapid rise has been accelerated by Egyptian and Emirati airstrikes in support of the LNA.

At first, those two countries kept their role secret due to U.S. disapproval. But following a massacre of Coptic Christians in February 2015, Egypt publicly launched airstrikes against Islamist militants in Libya. The Qatari-backed New General National Congress called Egypt's airstrikes a "horrible assault." Al-Jazeera coverage highlighted the civilian casualties of the strike.

The continuous airstrikes increasingly suggest an escalation of the conflict in a conventional sense. A once semi-secret activity is now being conducted in the open.

Qatar did not respond militarily to support its clients. Even if it wanted to, Libya is beyond the operational range of Qatari aircraft. Even the 24 longer-ranged Dassault Rafale fighter jets Qatar has ordered from France could not attack Libya without access to access to friendly airbases or mid-air refueling.

In any case, diplomatic relations soon returned to normal in the GCC, and on the surface Gulf politics seemed calm, with Qatar even joining the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.

However, in Libya, tensions between the two countries continued unabated with the Emirates and Egypt increasing their military support to Haftar in recent months.

This was apparent in the most recent Egyptian bombing campaign in Libya. Though it used the May 26 attack on Coptic Christians as a pretext, the Egyptian government acknowledged its new bombing campaign was not aimed at the perpetrators of that attack per se. Instead, the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council, an Islamist group, bore the brunt of the campaign. The group was an impediment to Haftar's efforts to consolidate control of the country. According to Arab press reports, the group has received support from Qatar.

Still isolated and left with few options, Qatar may choose Libya as the place where it strikes back at the UAE. If so, the long and wrongly ignored war in Libya is likely to be even longer.

Joseph Hammond, a former Cairo correspondent for Radio Free Europe, is a senior contributor with the American Media Institute. Suhaib Kebhaj is a Research Assistant at the International Monetary Fund and has worked extensively in his native Libya. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

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Qatar and Arab powers are already at warin Libya - Washington Examiner