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The violence roiling Libya has increasingly targeted oil companies and their assets, upending long-term investments by Western companies and driving down production in a country that helped launch the world-wide rout in oil prices.

In just three months, Libyan oil production has fallen from nearly 900,000 barrels a day in October to about 325,000 barrels a day in January, largely because of oil fields being taken over by armed Libyan groups or shutdowns due to security concerns, according to officials at the National Oil Co.

The plunging output comes after civil war broke out mid-2014 and caused two big closures at the end of the year.

French major Total SA closed the Mabruk oil field in central Libya, a facility that once produced 30,000 to 40,000 barrels a day. And the countrys main oil port, known as Sidra, was closed because of fighting, denting the prospects of the three American companies that have a stake in connected fieldsConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp. and Hess Corp.

Both sites were in the cross hairs of fresh violence on Tuesday. At Mabruk, at least four guards were killed and three hostages were taken when gunmen stormed the facility in a coordinated attack. But Mashallah al-Zawie, a top oil official, rose the estimate to nine on Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Libyan oil officials believe the attackers were radical Islamists and were investigating reports of a higher death toll.

Libya has been mired in violence and political divisions since longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi was killed in an uprising in 2011, and a civil war has broken out between the internationally recognized government based in the countrys east and a rebel faction known as Libya Dawn that controls the countrys capital of Tripoli.

Oil has long been the countrys lifeblood, with exports reaching up to 1.3 million barrels a day at peak production from Africas largest crude reserves.

There was an implicit agreement between the different fractions to avoid disrupting oil production, said Richard Mallinson, a geopolitical analyst at London-based consultancy Energy Aspects. Now the parties have realized that controlling oil means power.

The instability has had knock-on effects for other companies.

Late December, the German energy company Wintershall Holding GmbHwhich says it has invested more than $2 billion in Libyashutdown its Libyan production because of the fighting at Sidra, which is close to the Ras Lanuf and Zueitina terminals it uses.

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Oil Companies in Cross Hairs in Libya