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Rising U.S. production is holding oil prices down.(Photo: Getty Images)

The price of U.S. crude oil continued its tumble Tuesday as investors remain concerned about a global glut and developments in the Middle East that could add to the current supply.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil, the U.S. benchmark, fell 76 cents a barrel to $48.08, and is down 5.2% in the last month.

Brent crude oil, the benchmark for international oils, declined 51 cents a barrel to $51.01, its lowest since Nov. 29.

Signs that Libya is ramping up production may have spooked investors, says Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. Theres perception that oversupply is still a problem with Libya now able to produce around 750,000 barrels per day of crude, Kloza says, adding that's 250,000 more than what the country was producing recently.

Oil price falls below $50 as U.S. supplies hit record

Libyas production had been troubled by political unrest and fighting among militias and terrorist groups. But leaders of the two main factions in Libya have reached an agreement to set up a power-sharing presidential council, triggering hopes of political stability in the country, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

Libyas been a wild card because of chaos there, Kloza says. Its production ramp-up means more oil in the market.

Meanwhile, U.S. shale production continues to grow, contributing to the bountiful crude inventories in the U.S.

Oil traders were also paying attention to the remarks by made Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,in a Saudi TV interview,in which he indicated that the countrys austerity measures could continue if oil prices dropped further. He made some comments that were not really supportive of the market, Kloza says.

The market has been much weaker than what most investors would like it to be, Kloza says.

In November, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil-producing nations agreed to cut back on production for much of 2017 to boost prices. The move has helped to stabilize prices, and investors expect their agreement will be extended when OPEC countries meet later this month.

"The cuts have not meaningfully resulted in visibly lower crude oil inventories, especially in the U.S.," said Brian Kessens, Tortoise Capital'smanaging director and portfolio manager, in its podcast Monday.

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Oil price falls on Libya, supply glut - USA TODAY

Since 2011, Libya has become a hot spot of illicit weapons sales, manyof which occur through messaging applications and social media networks, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report which tracks more than 1,300 attempted online sales from 2014 to 2015 was published by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, and uses data collected and analyzedby the group Armament Research Services. Although its authors say that the data set is only a small fractionof illicit arms sales in Libya, the report highlights trends in the growingtrade.

Weapons from 26 countries, including the United States, China, Belgium and Turkey, were found in the 1,346 tracked sales, according to the report. Although most of the small arms were for self-defense and sporting purposes, some of the people involved in the transfers had ties to Libyan militia groups.

[Who in Libya will the U.S. send weapons to? Its complicated, says a top general.]

Whilst online trades appear to account for only a small portion of the illicit arms trade in Libya, their relative anonymity, low barrier to entry, and distributed nature are likely to pose unique challenges to law enforcement and embargo monitoring operations, Nic Jenzen-Jones, the director ofArmament Research Services, said in an email.

Last year, using the preliminary data from parts of this Small Arms Surveyworking paper, the New York Times reported that militant groups and terrorists were using social media networks such as Facebook to traffic weapons from small arms to antiaircraft missiles in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Facebooks policy toward weapon transfers appears to be unchanged since that article. The social media company prohibits arms sales but requires users to self-report pagesinvolved in the transfers. Because many groups are secret or closed to the public, the pages often gather thousands of members and operate for months before being shut down.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

The groups often make little effort to conceal the nature of their pages, according to the report, using pictures of weapons and names such as the now-removedLibyan Firearms Market. When a group is shut down, the report says, its core membership often starts another page and quickly resume trading.

The trades documented in the report are made mostly from individual sellers, although some of them are online extensions of physical arms bazaars in Libya. The report aside from monitoring the groups also draws on interviews from eight confidential sources that provide a samplingof the type of Libyans involved in the illicit arms market. Seven of them are younger than 35 and most are using the arms sales to supplement their incomes. At least one is selling weapons primarily Belgianhandguns to help pay for his education.

An engineer living in the suburbs of Tripoli and quoted in the report as Confidential Source 7 told the papersauthors that aside from the online market, weaponsare easy to get regardless of Internet connection.

With just a few phone calls, you can get a firearm starting from a 9mm to a rifle, the source said.

From 1992 to 2003, Libya was under a strict United Nations arms embargo following the countrys suspected involvement in the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the downing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989. According to the report, most of the weapons documented in the online trades are from the preembargo era, however some including potential covert arms supplied toMoammar Gaddafis regime also have appeared in social media groups.

[U.S. and allies ready to help arm Libyan forces against Islamic State]

Handguns, according to the report, were prevalentin the data because of Libyans desire to own concealableweapons. The report, however, stipulates that the pistols weredisproportionately represented in comparison with the majority of weapons on the Libyan small-arms market. More than 60 percentof the self-loading rifles documented were Kalashnikov variants, while 14 percent were Belgian-made FAL rifles.

The report documents three French MILAN antitank missiles, probably from a 2007 contract to Gaddafi, that were for sale online. Additionally, two German Heckler and Koch rifles, called G36s, appeared in the reports data. The serial numbers on the rifles have been removed and replaced with a numeric sequencethat doesnot match the manufacturers format and, according to Heckler and Koch, the company never shipped weapons of any type to Libya under Gaddafi.

After the Libyan revolution and NATOs intervention in 2011, the tightly controlled weapons stores of the Gaddafi regime were looted and the region was flooded withtens of thousands of small arms, including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Aside from showing up on online arms markets, the weapons have appeared in conflict zones across the Middle East and northern Africa.

Related stories: U.S. established Libyan outposts with eye toward offensive against the Islamic State

Five years after uprising, Western nations prepare to intervene again in Libya

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Libya has become a hub for online arms trading, report says - Washington Post

BBC News

Libyan-sponsored terrorism: IRA victims 'let down' by UK ... - BBC BBC News Victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism have been let down by successive UK governments in their campaign for compensation, a report has found. The late ... Governments have 'betrayed IRA's victims by not forcing Libya to pay compensation for smuggling explosives'The Sun UK accused of failing victims of IRA killed by Libya-supplied weaponsThe Guardian The abject failure to secure compensation for Libya-IRA victimsBelfast Newsletter PoliticsHome.com -RTE.ie -Belfast Telegraph all 23 news articles »

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Libyan-sponsored terrorism: IRA victims 'let down' by UK ... - BBC - BBC News

By Ayman al-Warfalli | BENGHAZI, Libya

BENGHAZI, Libya Libya's eastern military commander met the head of its U.N.-backed government on Tuesday, ending a 16-month standoff that has undermined diplomatic efforts to unify a country riven by factional fighting since 2011.

Having previously spurned invitations to engage with the government, Khalifa Haftar held talks with Fayez Seraj in Abu Dhabi that one source close to Haftar said produced an agreement to hold elections early next year.

Regional and Western powers have for months been pushing the two men to discuss resetting a U.N.-mediated agreement that led to the creation of Seraj's Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. The deal was an attempt to end the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Haftar is the dominant figure for factions in eastern Libya that have rejected the GNA, contributing to its failure to expand its power in Tripoli and beyond. Rival armed factions in the west of the country have backed the government.

Tuesday's meeting could be a step toward ending a stalemate between competing loose alliances that pushed the country into open warfare in 2014. But any lasting deal would need backing from the numerous and powerful armed groups that have scuppered previous attempts to stabilize the oil-rich country.

There was no official statement as Tuesday's meeting ended, or comment from the GNA side.

Sources close to Haftar said he met Seraj one-on-one for two hours of talks they described as positive.

One sticking point has been a clause in the U.N.-mediated deal giving the GNA's leadership immediate control over military appointments, which eastern factions fear will weaken Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA).

Libya's 218 channel, a pro-Haftar TV station, said they had agreed to propose cancelling the clause, and to form a restructured unity government.

"It was agreed to open permanent channels of communication and to form two working groups to complete an agreement on the details of the formation of a government and the military arrangements between officers from all regions," one source close to Haftar in Abu Dhabi who asked not to be named told Reuters.

There was also an agreement to hold presidential and parliamentary elections no later than March 2018, the source said.

DIVISIVE FIGURE

It was the first time Seraj and Haftar had met since the start of last year.

An expected meeting in Cairo in February fell through, though a roadmap for eastern and western parliamentary delegations to revive a peace process was agreed.

Haftar, a former Gaddafi ally, is a divisive figure who opponents suspect of seeking to return the country to authoritarian rule.

With backing from foreign powers including Egypt, the UAE and Russia, he has gained ground militarily since last year, taking control of several key oil ports and advancing in a long campaign against Islamist-led rivals in Benghazi, Libya's second city.

Haftar has also indicated that he expected to take Tripoli, though many observers doubt he has the capacity to do so.

As the LNA and its allies have pushed west in recent months, they have clashed repeatedly with GNA-aligned opponents around the oil ports and in the southern desert regions of Sabha and Jufra.

Haftar and his supporters have previously rejected the GNA because they say it is beholden to the militias that hold sway in Tripoli and the rest of western Libya.

(Writing by Aidan Lewis; editing by Patrick Markey and John Stonestreet)

PARIS France's presidential rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right's Marine Le Pen, go head-to-head on Wednesday in a televised debate in which sparks are sure to fly as they fight their corner in a last encounter before Sunday's runoff vote.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday moved to ease the tension from U.S. air strikes in April against Russian ally Syria, expressing a desire for a Syrian ceasefire and safe zones for the civil war's refugees.

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Rival Libyan kingpins break the ice in Abu Dhabi | Reuters - Reuters

A rift has opened between Libyas U.N.-backed government and its powerful National Oil Corporation (NOC), threatening the fractured countrys political cohesion and its nascent petroleum-industry recovery.

On Monday, NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla announced that the country has built its oil production up to 760,000 barrels per day and planned to go ahead with plans to expand production to 1.1 million bpd by August of this year.

Just a few days earlier, that same official openly criticized Libyas Government of National Accord (GNA), a United Nations-backed government whose formation last year raised hopes of political unity in a nation divided by warring militant groups. Sanalla said the GNA aimed to wrest control of NOCs petroleum deals for power over Libyas economic future.

Oil profits will be the lifeblood of any successful future government in Libya. Under Gaddafis reign, fossil fuels made up over 90 percent of Tripolis revenues, which the government used to provide heavy food and consumer goods subsidies to its citizens in exchange for loyalty.

After years of internal struggle, the NOC has managed to develop a firm grip over 90 percent of Libyas oil export revenues. The company achieves this by claiming to maintain its independence from various factions vying to run the country until elections are held, but Sanallas recent statement condemning the GNA breaks from this policy.

The NOC owes its recent stability to the Libyan National Army, which operates under strict orders from Khalifa Haftar. The Gaddafi-era generala U.S. citizen who lived in the United States for 20 yearshas managed to defend the nations oilfields and prevent rival groups from interfering with production operations. Related:OPEC Has Failed

Haftars maneuvering has ushered in a period of stability in Libya, which has earned him a say in political matters. Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken note of the burgeoning figure, offering him weapons, tours of Russian vessels, and direct access to senior Russian officials..

Sanallas attack on the GNAs credibility and alleged sabotage of the NOCs work signals a shift in favor away from the pro-Western United Nations and towards Russian interests. Haftar and GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj have long been at odds as well.

The latest conflict occurred in February in Cairo, a city considered to be Haftars home turf due to Egypts backing of LNA military ventures via air strikes. The generals departure from the Egyptian Capital without meeting with al-Sarraj caused him to lose aerial support from Libyas eastern neighbor as well as from the United Arab Emirates.

The NOC remains the most powerful domestic factor in the Libyan political arena due to its power over the oil resources necessary for the reconstruction of major cities affected by six years of civil war. Haftar and his LNA is the greatest military strength in the country. Both parties distance from the GNA suggests the international communitys plan for the future of Libya inches closer to complete failure each day.

By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com

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