Less than 2 weeks before they were to meet under United Nations auspices to discuss peace, militant groups shoved Libya back toward widespread war.
The self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), led by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, turned a February foray into southwestern oil fields northward toward Tripoli.
The LNA supports a shadow government in the east and controls the Sirte basin oil-producing region and Mediterranean ports.
Haftar in February moved troops into the Murzuq basin of southwestern Libya, ostensibly to liberate important El Sharara oil field from militants that seized it in December and shut in 300,000 b/d of production (OGJ, Feb. 4, 2019, p. 64).
But on Apr. 4, Haftar called for the capture of Tripoli, where the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is recognized by the UN, shakily controls the western part of the country.
The LNA was reported to have captured Gharyan, 31 miles south of Tripoli, without a fight. Closer to the capital, it met strong militia resistance.
The fighting began as UN Sec. Gen. Antonio Guterres was leaving Benghazi, where he met with Haftar, after meeting in Tripoli with GNA officials about an earlier-scheduled conference between rival groups Apr. 14-16. Before his meeting with Haftar, Guterres tweeted, “There is no military solution for the Libyan crisis, only a political one.” Afterward, he told reporters he was departing “with a deep concern and a heavy heart.”
The latest fighting escalates a civil war under way since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Qaddafi.
The country’s oil production has gyrated since then but late last year seemed stable at about 1.3 million b/d, even poised to grow. But that outlook depended on political stability and shattered when militants took control of El Sharara.
A hopeful expectation of current developments is that they’ll force Libya’s many factions to find a lastingly peaceful end to the country’s long nightmare.
A sad but more realistic view is that they’ll just drive it harder and deeper into bloody conflict.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Apr. 5, 2019. To comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity.)
