The Al-Sharara oil field in Lybia is closed due to an outbreak of coronavirus
The militia that controls the Al Sharara oil field, the most important in western Libya, has ordered its closure and the departure of all personnel after a COVID-19 infection was detected in one of the operators, the director of the Libyan National Oil Company (NOC), Mustafa Sanallah, announced on Monday. In a statement, the director blamed the Oil Facilities Protection Guard, allied with Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the unrecognised executive's guardian in the east and the country's strongman, for the situation because it broke into the field, managed by the international consortium Akakus, last week.
Akakus is a multinational created and shared by NOC, the Norwegian oil company Equinor, the Austrian OMV and the Spanish Repsol. "The Oil Facilities Guard broke into the field on 29 August and an employee became infected the next day when he mixed with them, forcing Akakus Oil, its operator, to close it down," Sanallah explained, before warning that the closure of the field could lead to "looting and oil theft".
Libya is a failed state, a victim of chaos and civil war, since in 2011 NATO contributed militarily to the victory of the various rebel groups over the Muammar al-Qadhafi dictatorship. The fratricidal conflict intensified in 2015 and since then has become a multinational confrontation, totally privatized, without armies, waged by local militias and foreign mercenaries linked both to Haftar's forces and to the National Accord Government supported by the UN in Tripoli, which dominates several areas in the west of the country.
Last week Haftar ordered the lifting of the blockade he imposed on the Libyan oil industry in February at the height of the siege on the capital. The blockade affected the power plants and reduced crude oil production to some 100,000 barrels per day, compared to 1.8 million in Al-Gaddafi's time. Al Sharara, on the other hand, produced around 300,000 barrels of oil a day before the Hafter blockade and was the energy engine of the west of the country.
