By Ayman al-Warfalli and Ahmad Ghaddar
BENGHAZI/LONDON (Reuters) – Libya’s state-run National Oil Corp (NOC) said that export activity was running normally after it held talks with protesters at the Es Sider and Ras Lanuf ports on Tuesday.
“(Oil) operations are proceeding without interruption across all fields and ports, subsequent to discussions held with protesters who conducted a demonstration this morning at the ports of (Es Sider) and Ras Lanuf,” the NOC said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Five engineers at the two ports and shipping source told Reuters the protesters had blocked loadings there, as they demanded the relocation of several oil company headquarters to the Oil Crescent region, calling for fair development of their coastal area to improve living conditions.
Ports in Libya’s hydrocarbon-rich Oil Crescent include Es Sider, Brega, Zueitina and Ras Lanuf, accounting for about half of the total exports from the country, while several oil companies are based in the capital Tripoli.
“All we want is equality,” one of the protesters Houssam El Khodor told Reuters. “The oil is produced in our regions and all we get from it is the toxic fumes.”
The protests came as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, of which Libya is a member, is due to discuss its policy of gradually increasing oil output after U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls for OPEC to lower oil prices.
NOC said on its official X account earlier on Tuesday that its crude production had reached more than 1.4 million bpd, about 200,000 bpd short of its pre-civil war high.
A loading programme seen by Reuters showed that Es Sider was on track to export about 340,000 bpd of crude in January, with another 110,000 bpd slated to ship from Ras Lanuf.
Brent crude prices which rose earlier in the day in part due to the Libya protests, were trading steady at a two-week low of about $77.17 a barrel at 1616 GMT.
Protests have previously disrupted oil operations in Libya, forcing the shutdown in August last year of about 700,000 bpd of production in a dispute over the position of the central bank governor.
The shutdowns lasted for more than a month, with production gradually resuming from early October.
(Reporting by Ayman Warfali, Jana Choukeir and Ahmad Ghaddar; Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Jan Harvey and Tomasz Janowski)
