Libya’s Increased Oil Production Thwarts OPEC’s Reduction Plans
Last month the national oil company announced an aggressive three-phase development plan to lift Libyan output to 1.32 million
barrels a day by the end of 2017, to 1.5 million barrels a day by the end of 2018, and to 2.2 million barrels a day by 2023.
The German oil company Wintershall reached an interim agreement to settle a dispute with the National Oil Corporation of Libya last week to resume production in two fields
that potentially could combine to increase output by 160,000 barrels a day.
Libya, along with Iran and Nigeria, was excluded from the OPEC agreement to slash production last year by more than a million barrels a day.
But the seemingly ungovernable country has already undermined OPEC’s efforts to cut production, and now Libyan oil executives are projecting
that their production will reach a million barrels a day by the end of July, a level not seen in four years.
Contrary to the predictions of almost all experts, Libya’s production has climbed a wall of crisis in
recent months to 885,000 barrels a day last week, roughly triple its production of only a year ago.
The head of the eastern branch of the Libyan national oil company has accused Qatar of using its 8.5 percent stake in Glencore to divert the trading
company’s sales of Libyan oil to finance terrorists, a charge denied by Mustafa Sanalla, the chairman of the national oil company based in Tripoli.