Libya: The Curse Of Black Gold

LIBYA

The Curse of Black Gold

Earlier this month, Libya’s massive El Sharara oil field, which supplies about a quarter of national output, halted production for a little over 24 hours. It was a crippling blow to a nation where oil accounts for 95 percent of export earnings.

But it wasn’t militants or armed conflict that affected production; it was an aggrieved farmer protesting pollution run-off from the facility.

“I closed the pipeline that crosses my land. The land is six hectares and it has become wasteland,” landowner Hassan Mohamed al-Hadi told Reuters. “We closed the pipeline last year for the same reason. A number of mediators had intervened to persuade me to reopen it within 20 days for cleaning the land but unfortunately the same thing has returned.”

The case exemplifies the strife that continues to plague the country with the largest proven oil reserves in Africa since the ouster of long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

At the heart of the conflict: oil.

Libya was once a federal system unified under a single crown, but the discovery of vast oil reserves led it to institute a centralized government in Tripoli in 1963 as a way to ease foreign business relations.

But the riches that poured into the country from the black gold – in 1970 Libya was producing over three million barrels of oil per day – failed to reach outer prefectures, widening geographical and ethnic divides.

Fast forward to 2011 after the fall of Gaddafi: With the new government in shambles and unable to properly oversee the state’s biggest asset, local factions seized some oil facilities and threatened long-term shutdowns to force political acquiescence.

Meanwhile, Islamic State and other armed militants from overflow conflicts in Chad and Sudan began to attack oil fields, adding to the dry spell in production.

And with the nation’s inconclusive elections in 2014 begetting rival governments in different parts of the country – mostly due to qualms about the redistribution of oil wealth, Reuters reported – Libya, once a beefy oil producer, became anemic.

There have been bright spots recently. Libya was allowed to exempt itself from OPEC-led production cuts to boost value, while foreign oil companies have moved in to invest in the nation’s facilities, much needed steps to ramp up production.

For the past few months, production has been churning along at about one million barrels per month, far less than the 1.6 million output before Gaddafi’s ouster, but still respectable given the strife.

Plus, the US and other nations have cracked down on oil smuggling, helping oil money to remain in the government’s pockets.

But with the nation’s south remaining largely ungovernable, foreign interference in Libyan affairs rife, human rights on the decline and dueling governments still at loggerheads, Libya isn’t pulling together anytime soon to save its greatest asset.

“Ironically, almost 50 years after precipitating its transformation into a unitary state, Libya’s vast oil resources are now a threat to its future and its unity,” Guma El-Gamaty, a Libyan academic, wrote in Al Jazeera.