Libya requires investments worth $60 billion to revive its energy industry, Chairperson of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) Mustafa Sanalla said Thursday.
In an interview with Emirati newspaper The National, he said $40 billion out of $60 billion is needed to increase the oil refining process to a million barrels per day and the rest would be dedicated for developing the upstream energy infrastructure within five years.
“For the next five years, $20 billion is required [the upstream], for downstream we have to validate the study with Wood Group. So the total requirement would be $60 billion,” Sanalla said.
He added that talks are underway with the UK energy services firm Wood Group to restudy the reforms that should be undertaken in Libya’s oil refining infrastructure along with the plans set to establish integrated refining and petrochemicals plants.
The NOC chairperson further explained that Libya succeeded in rising its oil production to around 1.3 million bpd after it had been decreased from 1.75 million bpd to 850,000 bpd in the aftermath of 2011 uprising. He hoped that the production would amount to two million bpd within four years.
“By 2022, we are going to have more than two million bpd, and three billion standard cubic feet of gas. So, we need a total of $20 billion for the next five years to be able to increase production,” he added.
These investments would be channeled into rehabilitating Libya’s oil fields, particularly the damaged ones, whose production has been cut to 150,000 bpd due to the war, he explained.
“We could add more than hundreds of thousands of barrels per day if we did some repair on pumps and generators,” Sanalla said.
As for the NOC revenues in 2018, he pointed out that institution gained $1.66 billion in revenues from its hydrocarbon assets in September, while the revenues received during the first nine months of the year reached around $17 billion.
“Last year’s total was $13 billion and the year before was only $4 billion. This is for the entirety of Libya’s oil, gas, petrochemicals, royalties and taxation.”
He admitted that NOC faces an acute crisis in its storage capacity, as millions of dollars are required to maintain the storage tanks in the two oil ports in eastern Libya, Sidra and Ras Lanouf.
