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Libya’s National Oil Corp. (NOC) announced Sunday the lifting of a force majeure declaration for Sharara, two weeks after pausing production citing a blockade by residents.
The NOC did not provide further details besides saying in a statement on its website that it was “declaring lifting of force major and [will] resume full production from Al Sharara field”.
A report by Reuters January 3 said protesters shut down the field, located in the Murzuq basin south of the North African country, to demand fuel supply security, development projects and jobs. The region was “in need of developing projects and services, such as a refinery for fuel supply, paved roads, a clinic and providing jobs for young people”, one protester told the news agency.
“Negotiations are ongoing to resume production as soon as possible”, said an NOC statement January 7.
Sharara is one of Libya’s biggest oil fields, according to the Akakus Oil Operations company, the consortium that runs it. Sharara can produce up to 330,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to news information from the NOC website.
Akakus Oil Operations is a joint venture of the NOC, Austria’s state-backed OMV Ag, France’s TotalEnergies SE and Norway’s majority state-owned Equinor ASA.
Two blocks have been developed in the field, NC115 and NC186. Crude from these two concessions is transported via a 723-kilometer (449.25 miles) long pipeline across the Sahara Desert to the Akakus Oil Operations Tank Farm on Libya’s northern coast, where the oil is dispatched for shipping to the global market, Akakus says on its website.
Libya is working to entice back international hydrocarbon developers whose operations have been hit by forced stoppages.
Oil and gas operations in Libya have been hit by blockades in the aftermath of the civil war that broke out 2011. The World Bank estimated the Libyan economy had shrunk by 1.2 percent in 2022 due to a blockade of oil production during the first semester alone. An analysis by the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) published May 9, 2022, said due to political instability since the start of the civil war, Libya’s petroleum production has fallen from 1.7 million bpd between 2006 and 2010 to a maximum capacity of 1.3 million bpd. The report on the EIA website cited repeated oil blockades among other factors.
The NOC is now aiming to raise oil output to two million bpd, it said in a March statement announcing the approval of its plan for 2023–27.
In a positive development for that goal, at least three companies lifted force majeure declarations last year.
Last August the NOC announced BP PLC and Eni SPA had decided to lift force majeure declarations on their Libyan operations and resumed “contractual obligations in the blocks awarded to them in the Ghadames Basin (A-B) and offshore Block C”.
Sonatrach Group followed suit. In a news release November, the Algerian state-owned oil and gas company said it was restarting exploration for blocks 065 and 96/95 in Ghadames.
The NOC in December 2022 issued a call for international oil and gas firms that have exploration and production agreements in Libya to lift their force majeure declarations. In a statement at the time, the NOC gave assurance of “readiness to provide all necessary support to resume their operations, as well as assisting them in facilitating the return, along with providing a safe working environment in cooperation with the civil and military authorities of the Libyan state”.
After BP and Eni’s restart decision, Equinor in October 2023 signed a memorandum of understanding with the NOC to explore potential oil and gas development in Libyan waters, as announced by the NOC at the time.
That development was followed by Arabian Gulf Oil Co.’s start of production at the DD21-80 well in the Misla oil field, as announced by the NOC October.
In another milestone that followed the August 2023 announcement of the lifting of force majeure by BP and Eni, OMV said it would launch exploratory drilling in Libya February 2024, according to an NOC statement last November.
