Fighting has intensified around three Libyan terminals through which oil exports resumed last September after the lifting of a blockade in place nearly 2 years.
Reopening of the Ras Lanuf, Es Sidra, and Zuetina terminals allowed Libyan production to roughly double to 700,000 b/d-still far below pre-civil war output of 1.6 million b/d in 2010.
Although combatants seem to want to protect the facilities, the resurgent militancy bodes ill for stabilization anytime soon of either oil production or fractious politics in Libya.
A group called the Benghazi Defense Brigades on Mar. 3 seized Ras Lanuf and Es Sidra, which had been under control of the Libyan National Army (LNA) since the Petroleum Facilities Guard ended its blockade last year.
The LNA is a group of army and police units, supplemented by local militias, fighting since 2014 to control Benghazi. Its leader is anti-Islamist Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar.
He's allied with the House of Representatives, the internationally recognized parliament based in Tobruk that refuses to accept the United Nations-sanctioned administration in Tripoli-the Presidential Council and Government of National Accord (GNA).
Parliamentary opponents of the GNA support Abdullah al-Thinni, who runs a shadow administration in eastern Libya.
Also on Mar. 3, supporters of an opposition group led by Khalifa Ghwell briefly occupied headquarters of the National Oil Corp. Ghwell was ousted as prime minister by the GNA a year ago.
The Benghazi Defense Brigades, the group attacking the terminals, formed last year seeking to return Ghwell to power.
With his fragile government wavering, meanwhile, Prime Minister Faez Serraj has appealed to Russia for help in forging a national consensus. Russia has solid relations with Haftar.
At the time of this writing, whether and how soon Haftar's LNA can retake the terminals-and how much damage and disruption might ensue-were unclear.
But events this month further erode the GNA's already rickety power base. The House of Representatives said 29 members formerly supporting the Tripoli government joined 44 who oppose it.