The National Transitional Council of Libya has confirmed that it will aim for a rapid restart of oil production to refineries, following news from ACOGO, the NTC-controlled oil company, that all refineries in Libya have been shut due to a lack of crude feedstock.
“No refineries are working. They can’t get crude oil. Some are in bad shape,” AGOCO spokesman Abdeljalil Mayouf told Reuters.
The shutdown leaves Libya wholly reliant on imports of refined oil and gas. It’s domestic consumption of oil before the conflict was around 270,000 barrels per day. The country is dependent on oil and gas to power pumping stations that bring watar to the capital, Tripoli, where UNICEF yesterday warned of an impending water crisis.
The NTC is optimistic that production can return to around double that required domestically from a standing start, and has said it will restructure the National Oil Company to make it “more nimble” in managing the country’s hydrocarbon production in future.
“The NOC (National Oil Corporation) initial estimate is that we can have about 500,000 to 600,000 barrels within two to three weeks,” Ali Tarhouni, the official in charge of financial and oil matters told Reuters from Libya’s oil ministry in Tripoli. “And then we ramp this up to the normal, which is about 1.6 (million). My expectation is that this will be done within a year or so.”
The damage sustained to most of Libya’s oilfields from the civil war has been minimal, Tarhouni said. “The state of the oil fields are a lot better than expected,” he told Reuters. “Overall if we want to put a number on it, the average is about 10 percent or so. Most of the fields are more than 90 percent fine.”
Tarhouni reaffirmed the NTC’s commitment to existing oil contracts. “We’re just going to put back things as they used to be. The NOC is the one that is practically running the oil industry. We will restructure that to make sure that it’s nimble.”
Retreating Gaddafi troops last week set fire to a storage tank at the export terminal at Marsha El Brega, and there are reports of damage to other infrastructure including power lines from Ajdabiya to the oil town of Ras Lanuf.
