Libya: a guy closes the production of the largest oil field
Now we present a piece of news that gives you an idea of how potentially easy it is to sabotage oil production outside Russia, at a time of great criticality for this product.
Crude oil production from Libya's largest oil field, El Sharara, was suspended after a Hamada valve was shut down by one or more unknown people, according to an oilprice report.
The El Sharara field is responsible for producing around 300,000 barrels of oil per day at full capacity, or more than a quarter of Libya's total crude oil production.
The news, which the Libyan NOC or the oil ministry has yet to confirm, comes hours after the Libyan NOC said it closed six oil ports due to bad weather. The affected terminals include Brega, Zueitina, Ras Lanuf, Sidra, Zawiya and Melita.
While the NOC claimed that the weather conditions created waves that made it impossible to dock and load the tankers, the Tripoli Government of National Unity (GNU) oil ministry said the weather was not bad enough to close the terminals. , accusing the NOC of "tampering with the capabilities of the Libyan people".
Libya's oil production continued to be unstable for years. In January, Libyan production dropped to 1,008 million barrels per day, according to OPEC secondary sources. Its average production in 2021 was 1.148 million bpd.
News of further disruptions to Libya's oil production comes at a particularly worrying time for oil markets, which are already struggling with low inventories, booming demand and a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Oil prices reacted to these events by climbing to levels not seen in years, with the WTI surpassing $ 111 a barrel on Thursday.
The political crisis is still too heated in Libya to be able to bring this country to the maximum of its oil production, but the country is also fragile in the face of partisan infiltrations that can damage the production of hydrocarbons with incredible ease. In the end it is enough to close a valve to stop the production of the largest deposit. We should be concerned with its internal security first of all, to guarantee our oil supplies.
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The article Libya: a guy closes the production of the largest oil field comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/libia-un-tizio-chiude-la-produzione-del-maggior-giacimento-di-petrolio/ on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 09:00:40 +0000.