Fighting halts Libyan oil trade

Libya

BENGHAZI, June 14, 2018 – Two of Libya’s largest oil ports were evacuated on Thursday as fighting raged nearby, the country’s National Oil Corporation reported.

Rival armed militias attacked the army of General Khalifa Haftar, which controls the Mediterranean ports of Ras Lanuf and Es Sider, alongside other parts of Libya’s so-called oil crescent, Reuters reported.

“National Oil Corporation has evacuated staff from both [Es Sider] and Ras Lanuf terminals for their safety due to armed clashes in the area,” the NOC said in a statement. “The loss in oil production is around 240,000 [bopd] and a planned tanker entry today to [Es Sider] has been postponed.”

Libya has seen frequent outages due to violence following the ousting of the country’s former authoritarian leader Muammar Gaddafi in a brutal civil war that erupted in 2011.