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Libyas biggest oil field Sharara is back to normal after a disruption caused by protests in the politically fragmented country,the state National Oil Corp. said.

Pumping was interrupted for hours after armed protesters shut some facilities, the NOC said in a statement. The company didnt give an updated figure for production at the field, nor did it explain what caused the disturbances or say who the protesters represent. Sharara in western Libya was producing 275,000 barrels a day as of July 12, a person with knowledge of the situation said at the time.

The field,operated by a joint venture between Libyas state producer and Repsol SA, Total SA, OMV AG and Statoil ASA, has experienced several brief shutdowns caused by different groups. It was closed for two days in June due to a protest by workers there.

Grievances and personal demands cannot be settled through causing harm to the entire population,NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanallasaid Monday in the statement. The tactic of shutting down facilities is an unacceptable negotiation technique, said Sanalla, who has campaigned to end a rash of blockades at Libyas ports and fields since he assumed leadership of the company in May 2014.

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Libyas crude output and exports reached a fresh three-year high last month as fighting among armed militias abated and leaders of the countrys rival administrations agreed in principle on steps to unite the nation.The recovery inthe country with Africas largest crude reserves makes it harder for OPEC and allied oil-producing nations to curb a global supply surplus thats depressing prices for the commodity.

The North African producer shipped about 865,000 barrels a day of crude in July, tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. That was a gain of 11 percent from June, which was already the highest since at least July 2014.

The speed at which Libya can revive crude sales is critical for the oil market because, together with Nigeria, the nation wasnt bound by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries supply restrictions that helped limit output this year. OPEC extended the cuts accord -- and Libyas exemption from it -- through March 2018.

Libya slid into chaos after the armed uprising that toppled and killed former strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, with myriad armed groups and two administrations vying for control of the countrys energy facilities. Its rival leaders -- Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar -- agreed last month on calling for a cease-fire, combining the countrys divided oil company and armed forces, and holding elections as soon as possible.

Originally posted here:
Libya's Largest Oil Field `Back to Normal' After Disruption - Bloomberg

SAN BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO, ITALY

Italian government ministers are becoming increasingly divided over risky naval efforts to curb the numbers of migrants who have landed at the countrys ports.

At issue what the mission should be for two Italian naval ships set to be deployed in Libyan waters. Several ministers object to the idea of Italian sailors turning back mainly sub-Saharan asylum-seekers either directly or indirectly in coordination with Libyan Coast Guard ships, some of whom are suspected of being in league with people smugglers.

The emerging cracks in the Italian government policy come as a ship leased to a far right anti-migrant group started to shadow refugee-rescue vessels operated by humanitarian organizations, raising fears of a possible dangerous confrontation at sea with the far-right activists from Defend Europe.

The number of migrants who have arrived in Italy this year totals more than 95,000, although in the past two weeks the rate of arrivals has eased slightly. About 2,000 migrants attempting the sea crossing this year have drowned. In the past four years, about 600,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores the majority of whom departed from Libya and made the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean Sea.

The mass influx has strained Italys emergency and humanitarian system almost to the breaking point and is a source of increasing political tension among Italys political parties. It is likely to dominate next years national elections and is worsening the electoral prospects of the center-left coalition government of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Last week, parliament approved the limited Italian naval mission to help Libyas coast guard regulate the flow of migrants and prevent human trafficking. On Sunday, a leading opponent of the mission, Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro, said, Turning migrants back to Libya at this moment means returning them to hell.

His remarks were prompted by reports that on Saturday, Libya's Coast Guard announced it had recovered and saved more than 800 migrants near its coast. Giro says that returned migrants end up in detention centers in the hands of militias, who take advantage of them to do their business. He says just returning migrants to Libya wont alleviate a huge humanitarian crisis."

Giro, a member of the Sant'Egidio Community, an influential Catholic volunteer association, also defended NGOs, which are being blamed by populist parties and some in the government for acting as a collective pull factor for migrants by mounting rescue missions.

The NGOs have been accused of coordinating pick-ups with people smugglers something the humanitarian organizations vehemently deny. NGO heads say they are merely doing what European governments should be doing more of rescuing migrants at risk of drowning. NGOs are now responsible for picking up more than 40 percent of those rescued at sea.

The head of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), Tommaso Fabbri, says, The responsibility to organize and conduct search and rescue operations at sea lies as it always has with states. As such, our current rescue activities are simply filling the void left by Europe.

Last month, the government of Italy introduced a code of conduct restricting what refugee-rescue charities are allowed to do, if they want to land migrants at Italian ports. Among other requirements, they are to refrain from patrolling within Libyas territorial waters.

Only three out of eight NGOs operating in the southern Mediterranean have agreed to the Italian terms. A vessel operated by the German NGO Jugend Rettet was seized last week off the coast of the island of Lampedusa by Italian coast guard vessels for breaching the code and the ship has now been impounded while investigations continue.

Giro is seen by the Italian media as the spokesman for an influential group of parliamentarians featuring left-wingers and Catholics. He acknowledges some NGOs subscribe to a no border ideology, a kind of humanitarian extremism, but he argues, In the face of the tragedy thats happening, I prefer humanitarian extremism to other types of extremism.

His views are in direct confrontation with former Communist and Interior Minister Marco Minniti, the exponent of a tough, security-focused line on migration.

The 61-year-old Minniti wants to close Italian ports to any NGOs failing to sign the code of conduct, a proposal frowned on by transport minister Graziano Delrio. And he was the main exponent for the Italian naval mission after persuading Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, the head of an internationally recognized government in Libya, to welcome the mission.

The Italian naval mission to Libya is not only under threat from opposition within the Italian government. Now a Libyan warlord has threatened to bomb the Italian ships.

Minniti has warned that the Democratic Party and its coalition partners face electoral disaster next year, if they fail to take mounting public anger seriously and come up with ways to curb the flow of asylum-seekers, most of whom are economic migrants fleeing poverty, rather than refugees fleeing war.

Anti-migrant rage is obvious in slogans daubed in cities and even in towns that have been allotted only a few thousand migrants. In San Benedetto del Tronto, a seaside resort on Italys Adriatic coast, high-school students shocked their teachers in July by daubing across a large mural the slogan Stop The Immigration Business! The mural adapted an Edward Hopper painting, replacing a yellow hay field with a dark and stormy sea and a boat loaded with migrants.

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Cracks Appear in Italian Resolve Over Disputed Naval Mission Off Libya - Voice of America

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He was describing the Nato-backed toppling of the regime of dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Mr Cameron joined then French President Nicolas Sarkozy after Nato airstrikes helped so-called freedom fighters defeat supporters of the dictator who had ruled Libya with an iron fist for nearly 40 years.

The former prime minister promised a new dawn for the country. But Libya today is a failed state where murder and torture go completely uninvestigated and ISIS-supporting terror cells are able to plot atrocities on the UK, such as the Manchester bombing.

It has since emerged that far from being freedom fighters, a number of the rebels who toppled Gaddafi, were Libyan extremists living in the UK who travelled to the country to fight the dictator.

They were part of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), also known as the "Manchester Boys", of which Salman Abedi, 22, who carried out the Ariana Grande atrocity, was part of.

Middleeasteye.netreported claims that known members of LIFG from the Manchester area, who were under anti-terror control orders to restrict their movements, had them lifted and their passports returned so they were free to leave and help in the fight against Gaddafi.

But Mr Cameron haddescribed those who overthrew the Gaddafi regime as having the "courage of lions".

Just over a month later in October 2011 some of those brave "rebels" applauded by Cameron executed the ousted the former Libyan leader after finding him cowering in a pipe.

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Mr Cameron had warned, if NATO did not help the rebels, Libya risked being a failed state that could pose a terror threat to us back home.

But, six years later, after taking the action, Libya is now a breeding ground for terror strikes on the UK and Sirte went on to become an ISIS stronghold.

The freedom and democracy Mr Cameron excitedly promised in his speech, that the UK and France would help build by "standing alongside" the liberators, has never materialised.

Mr Cameron said: "It is great to be in a free Benghazi and in a free Libya. The people of Britain salute your courage.

"Your city was an inspiration to the world. You threw off a dictator and chose freedom.

"Colonel Gaddafi said he would hunt you like rats but you showed the courage of lions.

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"Now, just as your courage has written the last chapter of Libyan history, so it must write the next one, and your friends in Britain and in France will stand with you as you build your democracy and build your country for the future."

The country has since been locked in a merciless civil war with various groups, including the Coalition-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which was supposed to rebuild the nation, ISIS, and other fighting militant groups.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the GNA was never able to assert itself through the Libyan National Army (LNA), even in the capital Tripoli, due to it competing with other factions.

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A migrant gestures from behind the bars of a cell at a detention centre in Libya

A HRW report on the state of Libya in 2016 said nearly half a million people had been internally displaced.

It said: "The civilian population struggled to gain access to basic services such as healthcare, fuel, and electricity.

"Militias and armed forces affiliated with the two governments engaged in arbitrary detentions, torture, unlawful killings, indiscriminate attacks, abductions, and forcible disappearances.

"Criminal gangs and militias abducted politicians, journalists, and civiliansincluding childrenfor political and monetary gain.

"The domestic criminal justice system remained dysfunctional, offering no prospects for accountability."

Now, just as your courage has written the last chapter of Libyan history, so it must write the next one, and your friends in Britain and in France will stand with you as you build your democracy and build your country for the future.

David Cameron

"Tens of thousands of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees from Africa and the Middle East transited through Libya on their way to Europe, with at least 4,518 drowning or going missing while crossing the Mediterranean.

"While in Libya, armed groups and guards at migrant detention facilities subjected many to forced labor, torture, sexual abuse, and extortion."

Disturbingly, far from the west standing with the Libyans as its new dawn was created, the report said the International Criminal Court (ICC), had failed to open a single investigation into any ongoing war crimes in Libya, despite having jurisdiction there.

The report added: "In July, 14 2016 unidentified bodies were found close to a dumpster in Benghazi with gunshot wounds, and in October, 10 unidentified bodies with gunshot wounds and torture marks were found in a nearby neighbourhood of Benghazi.

"Both incidents took place in areas under LNA control.

"In June 2016, unidentified armed groups killed 12 detainees upon their conditional release from al-Baraka prison in Tripoli.

"All 12 were members of the former Gaddafi government and had been accused of taking part in the violence against anti-government protesters in 2011.

"The ICC prosecutor has failed to open any new investigations into the grave and ongoing crimes in Libya, citing resource limitations.

"In her November 9 2016 update to the Security Council, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced her office would expand the Libya investigations in 2017 to include recent and ongoing serious crimes."

Award winning journalist and author John Pilger said in an article on his website: "Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state.

"More than 'giving rise' to Islamic State - ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 - these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base.

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Police are treating it as a possible terror incident

"The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

"Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a 'liberator', or imagined he was.

"The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the 'Manchester boys'."

On September 5, 2011, Mr Cameron addressed the House of Commons praising and justifying British involvement in the civil war.

He said "Britain could not stand by as Gaddafi slaughtered his people.

"Nor could we allow a failed pariah state festering on Europes southern border, with the potential to threaten our own security."

According to HRW, and the recent Manchester bombing, that is exactly what we have been left with.

Last September, a scathing report released by the Foreign Affairs Committee said Cameron was ultimately responsible for failing to stabilise Libya after the death of Gaddafi, which led to the rise of ISIS in north Africa, and that he took the country to war on a series of "erroneous assumptions."

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How David Cameron hailed those in Libya who went on to carry out Manchester terror strike - Express.co.uk

Last year, trade relations between Russia and Libya were close to non-existent at $74 million, but things are slowly beginning to improve.

The Russian Government has plans to reinstate certain ties with Libya.

RELATED: Venezuela's Maduro: We Don't Want to Be Like Libya

In an interview with Kommersant, the head of the Russian contact team on Libya Lev Dengov said the government is reviewing the reestablishment of economic relationswith Libya.

Infrastructural projects stalled when former President Muammar Gaddafi was assassinatedand civil war outbreak.

"We plan to resign the contracts signed during Muammar Gaddafis rule. This includes the previous agreements in the transport sector, construction of railways, energy, electrification and a number of others," Dengov said.

Since the death of Gaddafi, Russia has lost billions of dollars worth of contracts in Libya.

In 2008, Russian Railways signed a 2.2 billion contract to construct the 550-kilometer Sirte-Benghazi rail line. There were also oil and gas deals, in addition to electrification and peaceful nuclear development negotiations.

These plans were disrupted by the Libyan civil war that started in 2011.

Last year, trade relations between Russia and Libya were close to non-existent at $74 million, but things are slowly beginning to improve.

In February, Russian oil company Rosneft signed a crude oil purchasing agreement with Libyas National Oil Corporation.

Following more than half-a-decade of conflict, Libya is split between two rival governments. The western region of the country is under the rule of Fayez al-Sarrajs Tripoli-based Government of National Accord, while General Khalifa Haftar controls the eastern region, Tobruk.

The United Nations supports the Tripoli government and General Haftar is supported by the Libyan National Army and a number of countries including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

RELATED: Responsibility to Protect Justified Imperialist Goals in Libya

Dengov shared that Libya had an interest in purchasing Russian weapons, but insisted thatRussian will adhere to the UN Security Council embargo.

We do not take anyones side in this conflict and do not want to arm one to the detriment of others. We would like everyone to be in approximately equal positions, he said.

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Russia Seeks to Restore Economic Links with Libya - teleSUR English

"The petroleum markets are tipping toward the lower end of their recent trading range as oil producers meeting in Abu Dhabi have been slow to assure the market that compliance with this years production cuts will be improved, although we continue to note that adherence to the limits has actually been quite strong by historical standards," Tim Evans, Citi Futures' energy futures specialist, said in a note.

"The recent increase in OPEC production has mostly been a function of recovering volumes from Libya and Nigeria."

Officials from a joint OPEC and non-OPEC technical committee are meeting in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday to discuss ways to boost compliance with the deal to cut 1.8 million barrels per day in production.

Oil output in the United States remained high even though Baker Hughes data on Friday showed a cut of one drilling rig in the week to Aug. 4, bringing the U.S. rig count down to 765.

U.S. weekly oil production hit 9.43 million bpd in the week to July 28, the highest since August 2015 and up 12 percent from its most recent low in June last year. Morgan Stanley said in a note on Monday it expects to see U.S. oil production growing by 900,000 bpd in the fourth quarter versus a year earlier, up from a forecast of 860,000 bpd earlier.

Some analysts expected OPEC could talk up prices.

"Saudi Arabia will restate that they will export only 6.6 million bpd (six-year low) in August and inventories will continue to draw down," SEB Markets chief commodities analyst Bjarne Schieldrop said.

On the global demand side, Goldman Sachs said data available so far for June points to continued strong growth.

"We believe that the biggest driver for this robust demand is strong economic growth in recent months," Goldman said in a note.

(Additional reporting by Libby George in London, Jane Chung in Seoul and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Jane Merriman, David Gregorio and Frances Kerry)

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Oil Slides as Output Rises at Libya's Largest Oil Field - New York Times