A top rebel spokesman has said that the key oil town of Brega – including an oil refinery, storage units and pipelines – has been booby-trapped.
According to the Associated Press, Mahmoud Jibril, the rebels’ diplomatic chief, also said Qaddafi’s forces have boobytrapped oil fields. He declined to state which fields. While Brega is a key oil processing and shipment hub, the fields that feed it lie far to the south in the Libyan desert, leaving the country’s infrastructure vulnerable to sabotage.
“Unfortunately, Brega is a big minefield right now,” Jibril told an APÂ reporter after meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez. “We discovered that they planted mines all over the place. Even some oil establishments, some oil fields, have been full of bombs, explosives.”
The rebels had prematurely claimed Brega after fierce fighting last week, but were repelled by Gaddafi’s forces and have taken sustained casualties.
If Jibril’s report is true, such booby-trapping could render much of Brega’s oil infrastructure inoperative for months after the fighting. The rebels have encouraged private firms to invest after the conflict concludes. The rebels are currently depending on the release of frozen funds from the Gaddafi regime to bankroll their purchases of oil and arms.
Meanwhile, Gaddafi’s government are also claiming that NATO air strikes are damaging the country’s oil infrastructure. Abdul Hakim el-Shwehdi, managing director of Libya’s state al-Nahr company, said in a Reuters reports that  six guards were killed in an airstrike on Friday on a pipeline production plant just south of Brega in eastern Libya.
“This will be a major setback to future projects and a great problem to the maintenance activity,” Â el-Shwehdi said.
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