The long-running strike at the Waha field in Libya is reportedly over, after a new Chairman was appointed to the board of the Waha Oil Company by the National Transitional Council.
After weeks of rolling strikes and protests by Libyan Oil Workers at the Waha field since September, the incumbent chairman Bashir Alashab – who strikers believed to be a Gaddafi supporter – has been replaced by Ahmed Amar. The appointment will have been approved by the oil ministry and National Oil Company.
A Reuters report says workers are now preparing to return to the company’s fields. Libyans have swiftly increased production at other fields, despite ongoing security issues that have claimed workers’ lives and a lack of foreign expertise on which Libya’s oil industry was dependent before the war.
Ali Tarhouni, the oil and finance minister slated for a prominent role in Libya’s elected government, moved to oust Alashab several weeks ago but was blocked by the NTC.
“Now we have a new manager for the company,” Haithem Etarhouni, a Waha field engineer and representative for the striking workers, told Reuters. “The strike has finished.”
The Waha Oil Company, a joint venture between Libya’s national Oil Company, Hess, ConocoPhillips and Marathon, produced c.400,000 barrels per day (bpd) before being shutdown hurredly as civil war broke out in February.
Libya’s pace of oilfield regeneration has defied all but the most optimistic forecasters, with head of the Libyan NOC Nouri Burrein reporting that the country is now pumping 600,000 bpd and would return to pre-war levels of 1.6 million bpd by the end of 2012.
However, the pace of regeneration at Waha’s assets may be slower than that seen at Libya’s other fields. The Waha field was used as a base by Gaddafi force that elsewhere looted oil facilities extensively.
Widespread damage to the Es Sider oil terminal on the Mediterranean may also mean there is less incentive to return to capacity at breakneck speed.
