Libya expects its oil production to drop by another 200,000 barrels a day over the next week as workers try to fix a damaged pipeline.
The latest outage comes less than two weeks after militias shut down the OPEC member’s biggest field, Sharara, causing output to fall by around 350,000 barrels a day. Together, the closures will reduce Libyan production to about 700,000 barrels a day, the lowest in more than a year.
Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC) said late Saturday that the main pipeline linking the eastern Samah and Dhuhra fields to the country’s biggest export terminal, Es Sider, will be shut for maintenance. It said the pipe will be working again in a week.
Oil facilities can no longer be properly run because of “the large number of leaks” and “the consequences of illegal closures in the past years,” the NOC said in a statement. It also blamed lawmakers for failing to sign off on a budget for the company for the past two years.