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An oil refinery in Zawia in Libya. Photograph: Ismail Zetouni/Reuters

A power struggle for control of Libyas oil is threatening to deepen splits in the country and undermine the fragile authority of the UN-backed Libyan Government of National Accord, the GNA.

The battle has forced the politically neutral chairman of the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) to warn the GNA that it has overstepped its authority both by closing the oil ministry and by trying to take over some of the NOCs role.

The attack by Libyan oil boss Mustafa Sanallas may weaken already fraying international support for the Tripoli-based GNA led by Fayed Al Serraj. In a deeply divided country, Sanalla is one of the few public figures treated with respect by all sides.

Ambassadors from the five countries with permanent seats on the UN security council issued a rare joint statement on Saturday siding with Sanalla and warning all sides to show retraint, stressing that the petroleum infrastructure, production and export revenues belong to all the Libyan people and must remain under the stewardship of the NOC. The ambassadors regard the retention of an apolitical functioning national body responsible for administering Libyas vast oil revenues as critical to preventing the breakup of the country.

The statement was unusual since it did not assert that the GNA was the sole legitimate government in Libya. The GNA has had the support of western powers for more than a year, but its power base has never extended widely, even within Tripoli.

In a statement, Sanalla said he had asked the GNA to withdraw its recent resolution. It has exceeded its authority. Only the legislature has the power to make these changes.

Sanalla insisted that the NOC had long supported the establishment of a genuine government of national accord able to speak for all Libyans. But he continued: Until we have a settlement, our duty is to administer the countrys oil resources in trust for the benefit of the nation.

Sanalla had been acting as de facto oil minister; Serrajs closure of the department appears to bring part of the NOC under political control a move that risks opening the door further to corruption and revenues being siphoned off for private or political use.

Under the GNAs order, the prime ministers office will assume the role of a traditional oil sector regulator, signing contracts, supervising investments, approving projects, developing new legislation and setting price policy. The NOC would be left to execute the prime ministers plans.

The GNA statement claims that the NOC in future will monitor the production and exportation processes, and name Libyas representatives to attend meetings and conferences after consulting the prime minister. It will also suggest giving or taking away investment licences, and specifying the daily oil and gas production.

Sanalla has for months urged Serraj to hand over extra cash to repair and restore the countrys damaged oil infrastructure.

Production has been increased from 700,000 barrels per day from 200,000 bpd, but is now slipping due to the renewed unrest, and in particular the closure of the pipeline from Sharara, Libyas biggest field, based in western Libya. Pipelines are regularly shut as militias bargain for advantage. Sharara, which is run by Spains Repsol SA, had been producing 221,000 barrels per day. It only came back on stream in December after the pipeline had been shut for two years.

Sanalla had persuaded the group blocking the pipeline to desist in return for economic aid to the region, but there is a dispute over whether he has been able to fulfil what is essentially a political pledge.

Before the 2011 war, Libya produced 1.6m barrels per day and accumulated more than $100bn in reserves.

Innumerable efforts at political mediation by regional powers have failed as Libya struggles to make the political compromises necessary to form a unity government.

The NOC is one of the few functioning national institutions that has worked across a complex political divide including Serraj and the forces of Field-Marshal General Haftar, the leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army in the east. Western governments have been forced to acknowledge that Haftar, backed by Egypt and Russia, must be given a prominent position in a reconstituted government of national unity, but believe Haftar is intent on becoming a military dictator, rather than a military commander under a clear civilian command.

The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, told MPs this week that Haftar must have a role, but not the only role.

But Mattia Toaldo from the European Council on Foreign Relations said Russias increasing political backing and the anti-Islamist winds blowing in Washington have strengthened Haftars belief there is no point negotiating a political solution with the forces in western Libya.

Toaldo has said that the diplomatic vacuum has been made worse by the effective end of the role of Martin Kobler, the UN Libyan special envoy. No new envoy has been appointed.

Sanalla has been slowly increasing Libyan oil production, and persuading foreign oil companies from Russia, Italy and the UK to have the confidence that Libya is a country in which it will be safe to invest.

But his case was badly damaged last month when the Benghazi Defence Brigades, with the covert support of figures in the Serraj government, sought to take control of of the major oil ports of Sidra and Ras Lanuf. The ports had been for months been under the control of Haftar, but he had ordered that the revenues from the terminals go to the Tripoli government.

The assault by the Benghazi Defence Brigades led to a revival of an Eastern NOC to rival the NOC and Sanalla, so potentially ending the NOC as the monopoly administrator of Libyan oil. A breakup in the distribution of revenues would probably hasten the disintegration of Libya itself.

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Struggle for control of Libya's oil threatens to deepen conflicts - The Guardian

Benghazi - A Libyan air force pilot was killed on Wednesday as his fighter jet crashed in the east of the country after carrying out strikes on a nearby jihadist stronghold, a military source said.

The MiG-21 crash-landed in a residential area south of Tobruk, where a rival to Libya's UN-backed unity government is based, 1 200km east of Tripoli.

A source at a Tobruk military base, who declined to be named, said the jet had carried out bombing raids on jihadist positions in Derna, 100km west of Tobruk, before crashing.

The pilot, a member of forces loyal to Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar, was killed but the source was unable to say if the incident caused any other casualties.

A spokesperson for Haftar's forces said on Facebook that the crash was down to a "technical failure".

Libya has been riven by fighting since the NATO-backed ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gaddafi, with rival forces vying for territory and the country's vast oil wealth.

The chaos has allowed jihadist fighters including the Islamic State group to gain a toehold on pockets of the Mediterranean coast.

Haftar supports the Tobruk-based authorities and opposes the UN-backed Government of National Accord, which controls Tripoli but has struggled to assert itself outside the capital.

Haftar's forces have battled jihadists in second city Benghazi for more than two years. They have lost several aircraft in recent months.

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Pilot killed in Libya fighter jet crash - News24

Libyas crude production dropped to about 500,000 barrels a day, the lowest since September, as exports from the nations second-largest terminal at Zawiya were disrupted.

The OPEC nations output has fallen from about 700,000 barrels last week since production halted at Sharara in southwest Libya following the shutdown of the pipeline that links the field to Zawiya, according to a person familiar with the matter who isnt authorized to speak to the media and asked not to be identified. Shipments from Zawiya, west of Tripoli, are now under force majeure.

An increase in Libyas crude output since late last year faltered this month when an armed group took control of the nations biggest oil port at Es Sider, east of Tripoli, where the first tanker in weeks loaded on Monday, according to tanker tracking. The nations output averaged about 624,000 barrels a day in the past five months, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Brent crude futures gained in London amid concern about supply disruption, which has now also spread to the Mellitah terminal. Brent gained 22 cents to $51.55 a barrel as of 1:36pm London time, advancing for the third time in four days.

Libyas National Oil Corp. declared force majeure on Sharara crude with effect from Tuesday, a clause which relieves it from delivery obligations due to circumstances outside its control. The same restrictions are in place for loadings of Wafa field condensate from Mellitah, according to the person.

Libya has sought to boost crude exports after fighting among rival militias hobbled oil production following the overthrow in 2011 of Moammar Al Qaddafi. The conflict showed signs of calming in recent months, with oil output rising from as little as 260,000 barrels a day in August, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Libya pumped 1.6 million barrels daily before Qaddafis ouster.

Sharara, which was producing 221,000 barrels a day before the halt, is operated by a joint venture between NOC and Repsol SA, Total SA, OMV AG and Statoil ASA. The fields total capacity is 330,000 barrels a day. The Eni SpA-developed Wafa oil field, further to the west near the Algerian border, has capacity to produce about 35,000 barrels a day.

A booking for an Aframax tanker, Sea Vine, which was to arrive at Zawiya Wednesday to load 600,000 barrels of Sharara crude has been canceled, said a second person who also asked not to be identified. Sea Vine is still showing Zawiya as its destination, according to Bloomberg tanker tracking.

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Libya's Oil Output Falls to Six-Month Low as Field Shuts - Bloomberg

A common theme among many postcolonial countries in the Middle East is the difficulty of placing various religious and ethnic groups under the same states flag. Libya is different, as its people are overwhelmingly Sunni Arab. Nevertheless, tribal politics have instilled serious divisions in the country. The friction coalesces around two of the three primary regions of Libya, Cyrenaica in the east and Tripolitania in the west (the third historic province of Libya, Fezzan, is to the south of Tripolitania and tends to align its views with its northern neighbor). While the Qaddafi years represented a period of oppressive centralized control for all factions of Libya, the events since the revolution have caused these long-repressed tensions to bubble to the surface.

In the face of this growing sectionalism, Libyans should urgently adopt a constitution that provides a basic formula for co-existence. The pre-Qaddafi 1963 constitution offers just such formula. Splitting Libya along the traditional Tripolitania/Cyrenaica border would be a viable last resort if the constitutional solution remains elusive.

Two crucial events in 2012 set Libya on a path of almost no return. In March 2012, federalist forces and their supporters gathered in what is now called the the Soap Factory Meeting in Benghazi to declare their federalist demands and install Zubair Sanusi, a relative of the late King of Libya, as the head of the movement. Just a few months later, Abdul Jawad Badeen, an ex-member of the Libyan Fighting Group, used his forces to block the main coastal highway at Wadi al-Ahmar in protest of the one-man, one-vote electoral method, and demanded that the new constitution drafting committee be elected based on regional considerations. These federalist forces were pressing for a solution that would take into account the views of the three regions as equal, rather than as weighted by population. After all, Tripolitania has a population that is double that of eastern Libya. Given this pressure, the demands of such regionalists were recognized, meaning that Libyas constitution would be written to give considerable weight to itsregions.

The divide between east and west became even wider with the new Libyan House of Representatives (HoR), elected in 2014, taking office in the eastern city of Tobruk, instead of Tripoli. In defiance of the U.N.-sponsored political agreement and the international community, the HoR sanctioned the formation of a duplicate central bank, national oil company, and a government based in eastern Libya, or as federalists fondly call it, Cyrenaica. An ex-Libyan military officer and prisoner of war, Khalifa Hifter, led the armed rebellion against western Libya and its institutions. A coalition of eastern tribal forces and a rag-tag army led by Hifter moved against revolutionary forces under the guise of pushing out terrorists and Islamists. The real motive was toethnically cleanseCyrenaica from all those withfamily rootsfrom western Libya.

This marriage of convenience between Hifter and Libyas eastern tribes became shaky as the long-term objectives began to diverge. The tribes pushed for more autonomy and resources while Hifter, in typical Middle Eastern military fashion, wanted to consolidate power for himself and his family. Both sides have been using each other for different objectives. According to statements by his ex-spokesman,Mohamed Al-Hejazi, and FirstLieutenant Faraj Eqaim, Hifter seems to keep the upper hand by purportedly assassinating his foes and turning one tribe against another, or sowing divisions within thesametribe.

To compensate for the lack of fighters, Hifter relied on theMadkhalisto give him religious cover and reduce his dependence on tribal fighters. Madkhalism, an offshoot of Salafi thought, advocates that those in power are to be considered waliu al-Amr or one vested with inviolable sanctified authority. Madkhalis have traditionally supported autocratic Middle Eastern regimes including Qaddafi. Military governors were installed in most regions in eastern Libya and some elected officials were removed from local councils. Friday sermons became tightly censored and travel outside eastern Libya required permission from security agencies, all reminiscent of Qaddafis oppressive 42-year rule of Libya. Regional autocracies found willing partners from all sides in Libya, including those in the west. Money and military hardware flowed in despite international sanctions. Hifter, in particular, managed to align himself with Egypts Sisi, the U.A.E., and recently with Russia.

Some would justifiably say that thefailureof the Constitutional Drafting Assembly (C.D.A.), established in April 2014, to produce a viable constitution was the straw that broke the camels back. Infighting, divisions along tribal and regional lines, corruption, and legal violations plagued the C.D.A. Keeping with federalist demands, regions that contained two-thirds of Libyas population formed only one-third of the members of the C.D.A. The Amazigh minority boycotted the C.D.A. altogether. The Cyrenaica representatives maneuvered tirelessly to produce a constitutional draft that would offer them control over the political and economic institutions, based on regional allocations including governmental positions. The national interest was simply ignored. Three years later, no draft constitution was produced. Instead, two inadequate versions were presented by competing factions inside the C.D.A. Sectionalism and inequality were codified in the pro-Cyrenaica version, including enshrining the one-man, four-vote benefiting those in eastern tribal regions. The constitutional crisis continues with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Libyans will have no choice but to soon make some hard decisions. One such option is returning to the region-conscious 1963 constitution. An earlier constitution in 1951 had granted a great deal of authority to the regions. However, this version was drafted before the exploitation of the countrys oil reserves.

After all, many of the changes that the 1963 constitution introduced were to limit the authority of the regions in favor of expanding the rights of the people. Most obviously, the 1963 amendments removed allusions to the three nations that made up Libya. That said, the countrys divided nature was still reflected in the updated provinces of the country, increased in number so as to limit the ability of a few strong actors to gain power in each region. Considering the vast differences in population, it offers protections to the east without being unfair to those in the west. With minimal revisions, the references to monarchy could be replaced with a presidential or a parliamentary system. Once a transitional period of a few years has passed, Libyans will be free to permanently adopt this updated constitution or to look for a new one.

The return to the 1963 constitution is gaining momentum in Libya, with several movements, ranging from royalists to pro-democracy activists, calling for an adoption of the constitution.

Failure to find a formula that brings together east and west, such as the 1963 constitution, could result in the country being divided in two. A split between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, in which each state is able to administer its people in an effective manner, would be a much fairer option to the Libyan people than continued discord and chaos.

For this option, the Libyans have two examples to look to. The first of these is the most optimistic. In the 1993 Velvet Divorce, Czechs and Slovaks dissolved the state of Czechoslovakia and formed their own states. Again, arguments about fairness between the two historic regions were raised as the reason for the splitSlovaks complained frequently about the fact that Czech economic and cultural institutions were held in higher esteem and advanced whereas Slovak cultural traits were minimized.

But a more familiar example for eastern Libya is South Sudan. The very tribalism that currently drives the debates in eastern Libya has caused the South Sudanese government to grind to a halt, with sporadic clashes between rival forces. Given the power of the tribes in Cyrenaica, there is significant risk that this would happen if eastern Libya suddenly found itself independent.

Libyas third region, Fezzan, is likely to choose to remain part of western Libya as its demographics are under threat by the illegal immigration of more non-Libyan Tebu and Tuareg tribes who seek to join their Libyan distant relatives, while indigenous Libyans from the region are moving away to the more prosperous and relatively safer north. Without uniting with Tripolitania, these Libyan tribes, families, and communities that once formed a majority in the region may become a minority.

Western Libya suffers from its own problems. But the genuine yearning for democracy, much weakened tribal ties, and rejection of military rule will prevent it from giving in to the never ending separatist demands. Should the Libyans in the west offer the 1963 federalist constitution, they would be extending a hand to their fellow Libyans in the east. But if this hand is pushed away, Libyans should part ways. Unity at any cost is a cost too high.

By Emadeddin Muntasser and Mohamed Fouad

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Libyan Express's editorial policy.

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Libya Should Revive the 1963 Constitution - Libyan Express

MADRID Hundreds of migrants may have died off Libyas coast, a Spanish aid organization said Friday, and Turkish media reported that 11 migrants died after a boat sank in the Aegean.

Video footage from DHA in Turkey showed a half-dozen covered bodies that were laid out near ambulances. The migrants boat capsized near the Turkish resort town of Kusadasi and nine people were rescued, the Turkish Coast Guard Command said. It said two people, believed to be smugglers, were detained.

Concerns about the missing migrants near Libya rose after Spains Proactiva Open Arms group found five bodies near two capsized boats on Thursday. Proactiva spokeswoman Laura Lanuza said the German aid organization Jugend Rettet found a sixth body in the area Friday.

The International Organization for Migrations said it had no confirmation of the two boats mentioned by Proactiva near the Libyan coast, but believed the bodies could be part of an earlier wreckage. About 120 people were believed to be on board a smugglers boat that capsized on March 21, the IOM said, but only 54 were rescued.

Meanwhile, the search for a third vessel reported missing in the area has so far proved futile.

Lanuza said their vessel was expected to arrive Saturday at the Italian port of Catania to hand over the bodies of the five young men who had drowned. Other agencies, meanwhile, continued the search for more possible victims off Libya.

The U.N. refugee agency said it was deeply alarmed by the reports. Both it and Proactiva said they feared the death toll may be much higher as migrant dinghies are normally crammed with around 120 people each.

The agency cited NGO sources as saying the five floating corpses of the young men had been recovered 14 miles (22 kilometers) off the Libyan coast near two empty and partially submerged rubber dinghies.

Lanuza said the boats were found Thursday morning, north of the Libyan town of Sabratha. The five men of African origin were estimated to be between 16 and 25 years old and appeared to have drowned, she said.

The Red Crescent in Libya, and the Libyan coast guard, said Friday that they had no reports about dead migrants or capsized boats in Libyan territorial waters.

The UNHCR said the latest incidents come after an intense week of arrivals across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa, with almost 6,000 migrants and refugees rescued in just five days this week.

It said so far this year some 21,903 people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to European shores.

The agency said since the beginning of 2017, and excluding the latest incidents, around 590 people have died or have gone missing in crossings.

Last year was the deadliest ever recorded with 5,096 migrants perishing or going missing, according to the UNHCR.

Amnesty International called the European Unions cooperation with the Libyan coast guard to intercept departing smuggling boats full of migrants as a hopelessly blinkered approach and urged European leaders to offer safe, legal routes for migrants to enter Europe.

How high must the body count get before European governments accept that their current strategy isnt working? said the groups deputy Europe director, Gauri Van Gulik. (AP)

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Aid group fears hundreds of migrants drowned off Libya - The Philadelphia Tribune