Haftar's Army Says Key Libyan Oil Ports Back Under Its Control
A power struggle for control of Libya’s 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 NOC’s role.
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.
Now the ports of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, a petrochemicals factory and the nearby Harouge storage tanks had all been recaptured in a land, air and sea offensive, said Miftah Al Magaraif, head of a Petroleum Facilities Guard faction loyal to Haftar. His Libyan National Army announced its full control of the ports on its official Facebook page. The facilities were seized from Haftar earlier this month by a rival group, which later said it handed them to the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli.
Haftar’s recapture of the two terminals will help boost the OPEC country’s oil exports to 550,000-600,000 barrels a day within days, Riccardo Fabiani, a London-based senior analyst at consultants Eurasia Group, said in an emailed report. It will also allow the increase in output from oil fields which normally feed the terminals, he said.
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.
