Renewed fight over Libya’s oil threatens entire country
The repeated attacks against the country’s main oil lifeline will always be a looming threat as long as no central government is in place with full power over the entire territory of Libya.
On the morning of June 14, with just a couple hundred armed men driving a dozen pickup trucks, Ibrahim Jadran, the commander of the so-called Petroleum Facilities Guard, took over two of Libya’s main oil exporting terminals used by the Libyan National Oil Company (NOC) — Es-Sidra and Ras Lanuf. The terminals are located in eastern Libya near Jadran’s hometown, Ajdabiya, where his tribesmen of al-Magharba tribe are concentrated and seem to have helped him.
The NOC was forced to declare a state of force majeure, suspending oil exports and evacuating its employees from both terminals and surrounding areas.
