TRIPOLI, (Reuters) – Libya’s Fathi Bashagha indicated in a tweet that a partial blockade of the country’s oil output was ending, but engineers in major fields said there were no orders yet to restart production.
The partial blockade by eastern-based forces as a tactic in the wrangle between rival factions over control of the government has roughly halved Libya’s 1.2 million barrels per day of output.
Bashagha, who was appointed as prime minister by the parliament but has been unable to take over in Tripoli, tweeted a link to a video statement by a group blockading an oil field saying it had agreed to restore production.
The group said it was reopening the closed oil fields and terminals on the instructions of the parliament speaker Aguila Saleh.
Bashagha added in his tweet that efforts to restore output had been successful after the group shown in the video announced its agreement to end the blockade.
However, engineers at Sharara, Sarir, El Feel and Abu Tifl said they had not yet been told to restore output.
Groups blockading the fields had demanded that Bashagha’s government be able to take over in Tripoli, where Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah refuses to cede power as prime minister.
Dbeibah’s oil minister Mohamed Oun told Reuters on Tuesday that Libya’s daily output was now between 600,000-650,000 bpd and that the country was losing $50 million-60 million a day from the blockade.
(Reporting by Ayman al-Warfali and Ahmed Elumami, writing by Angus McDowall, editing by Sandra Maler)
