Libya: large Al Sharara field closed in the midst of the energy crisis
Libya has declared a force majeure lawsuit on exports, largely blocking them and thereby exempting themselves from complying with oil export contracts, even as oil prices around the world are plummeting.
Libya's National Oil Company (NOC) said crude oil production was shut down from four of Libya's oil fields, including the rich El Sharara field.
El Sharara, Libya's largest oil field, has a capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. Other closed oil fields include El Feel, Wafa and Hamada. The oil fields have been closed by members of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), which is tasked with protecting the oil fields, according to the NOC. The PFC reportedly closed a valve on a pipeline from Sharara to the port of Zawiya as well as another secondary one. Extractions in the eastern part of the country remain active.
A senior management reshuffle at Akakus Oil Operations, the final operator in El Sharara, is said to be a bone of contention. Akakus is a Joint Venture between NOC, Repsol, OMV, Equinor and TotalEnergies of Libya.
As a result, the NOC declared a force majeure on all crude oil exports from the Zawia and Mellitah terminals. This has also caused a drop in electricity generation in the country, with an abundant one
NOC had already adapted to the drop in production decided by OPEC for November, so the field was already below its production average … Libya's outages will only exacerbate the group's underproduction, which is already pushing 700,000 bpd to November.
Libya's crude oil woes come at the height of presidential elections in the African nation set for December 24, but there are serious doubts that the elections will actually take place on that date with numerous controversies abounding over who can stand for election. race.
Libya's crude oil production was 1.140 million barrels a day in November, according to OPEC's latest monthly oil market report released last week, down from 1.155 million barrels a day in October. At this point, a further decline is to be expected. Furthermore, the economic and political pressure on the current and future government will be enormous. In the meantime, we are watching ..
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The article Libya: the large Al Sharara field closed in the midst of the energy crisis comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/libia-chiuso-il-grosso-giacimento-di-al-sharara-in-mezzo-alla-crisi-energetica/ on Tue, 21 Dec 2021 11:10:36 +0000.