Less than a month after Libya’s giant oil field Sharara returned to pump oil following a 2-week disruption, Sharara closed again on Sunday evening, and more than 230,000 bpd of Libya’s oil production is currently offline again, Reuters reported on October 2, 2017, citing an oil source and an engineer at the field.
Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) was «working towards a swift restart of production.
At this moment, there are no plans to declare force majeure,» Reuters quoted the NOC statement .
According to a trading source, the latest shutdown at Sharara was due to a protest over salaries.
Just before the oil field was closed on Sunday, it was producing around 236,000 bpd.
«More than 360,000 barrels per day of Libyan crude oil production has been shut in by a criminal militia operating in Western Libya,» NOC said in a statement on August 30.
Before the August shutdown at Sharara, Libya was producing around 1.1 million bpd - after topping 1 million bpd at end-June for the 1st time in 4 years.
This was still short of pre-2011 levels, when Libya produced about 1.6 million bpd, but on the way to 1.2 million bpd – the daily production figure NOC announced it will be striving for earlier this year.
