On Saturday, the head of Libya's state-run National Oil Corp. (NOC) Mustafa Sanalla warned that the conflicts around the country’s major oil export terminal pose a massive risk for a worse disaster from the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon as there are flammable commodities stored in the terminals.
In recent weeks, the physical conflict between the UN-backed Government of National Accord and the Libyan National Army has intensified. Sanalla called for Libyan oil facilities to be made into buffer zones and for mercenaries to disengage from the sites.
Sanalla elaborated that the oil export terminals, for example, Brega, has a sizable amount of ammonia more than 25,000 mt and 1 million barrels of condensate. Those materials could catch fire and invoke a disaster worse than the explosion seen in Beirut.
Other than that, the violent frictions in the Brega region also prompted a threat to the surrounding oil facilities in the Gulf of Sirte.
The Libyan oil industry has been battered by the conflict with a crude production in the past few months being slashed by roughly 70,000-100,000 bpd from more than 1.10 million bpd before the blockade.
Sanalla previously said that the foreign forces meddling in its oil sector have prevented Libya from restarting production.
