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Total’s exuberant and perhaps premature announcement of its purchase of Marathon Oil’s stake in the Waha concession offended sensibilities at National Oil Corporation (NOC) which likes to have the final say. African Energy understands that NOC has no fundamental objection to the French IOC and chairman Mustafa Sanalla is eager to get more international companies to return. However, while he has been talking to BP and Eni about restarting exploration, political opposition to Total’s swoop has intensified.

The management of General Electric Company of Libya (Gecol) is striving to add every possible megawatt to the national grid before the holy month of Ramadan, which this year starts in mid-May. With peak demand expected during the summer months, efforts to resume and even complete key projects are being revived. Similar efforts in previous years have been undermined by security problems, budget constraints and political interference. These threats remain.

Total’s purchase of Marathon Oil’s share in the Waha oil concession may yet be pre-empted by National Oil Corporation (NOC), which is under pressure to step in under identical terms. The Waha employees’ union has rejected the deal, as has the energy committee of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives – Libya’s official legislature.

On 2 March, Total announced its purchase of Marathon Oil Libya and with it a 16.33% stake in the Waha concession for $450m. The concession’s total output of 300,000 b/d has not significantly increased since the original US partners, including Hess and ConocoPhillips, who developed the fields under the name of Oasis Oil the 1950s, were allowed back into the assets in 2005 following the end of US sanctions against the regime of the late Colonel Muammar Qadhafi.

Italy’s Eni will become a major player in African renewables while also strengthening its support for domestic gas markets in countries where it operates. The company is investing in exploration and production in every North African country except Tunisia and is fast becoming one of the leading sponsors of solar projects in these countries.Chief executive Claudio Descalzi described a strategic vision for Eni and the role it expects to play in its core markets in a hosted interview as part of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Energy conference in London on 29 January.

A major challenge for Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) is dealing with fuel smuggling. As well as producing crude oil, NOC purchases diesel and gasoline imports and organises their distribution via its subsidiary Brega Oil Marketing Company. In the past, it has estimated that over 30% of imported fuel is smuggled out of Libya and resold. NOC has limited resources to prevent this, and it now seems that, far from getting government support, officials may be on the side of the smugglers.

The latest UN-led attempt to reconcile the rival groups competing to gain control of Libya shows no sign of being any more successful than previous efforts. As none of the major factions has the strength either to break away entirely, or to subjugate its opponents and take command by force, the most likely scenario is that the country has reached a kind of deteriorating equilibrium in which economic resources will be steadily depleted.

Libya has taken a new direction in its struggle to install enough generating capacity to bring to an end the debilitating and unpredictable power outages which have become a regular feature of life across the whole country, but it needs some luck to make its plan work. The contract recently signed between Siemens and General Electric Company of Libya (Gecol) to rapidly install 1.34GW of power in Tripoli and Misratah, plus Mytilineos’ contract to build a plant in Benghazi and the completion of the Awbari plant would together provide enough capacity to cover peak loads, even in the hottest summer months.

Sonatrach has not pulled out of Libya, “despite the security circumstances our neighbour country is experiencing”, the Algerian national oil company’s president director-general Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour said during a late November visit to Hassi Messaoud. Sonatrach still has a drilling rig on the ground, “and we want to continue to be in Libya”, Ould Kaddour said during a visit to southern Algerian oil fields.

National Oil Corporation (NOC) has announced plans to open an office in Houston – its first outside Libya – as part of what it describes as an “ambitious $20bn spending programme to restore production capacity over the next three years”. Announcing the plans during a visit to the US, chairman Mustafa Sanalla said the decision was motivated by US support for “NOC’s integrity and the unity of the state of Libya”. He said it would “put America’s world-class equipment manufacturers and oil field service providers at the centre of our purchasing strategy and…

In early October, National Oil Corporation (NOC) officials met Central Bank of Libya (CBL) governor Sadiq Al-Kebir, tribal and municipal representatives, and international stakeholders including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, diplomats and international oil company executives at St George’s House in Windsor Castle. According to NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla, the most important of the eight principles agreed during the meeting was that the exploitation of Libya’s oil and gas resources should be for the benefit of all Libyan people, regardless of location.

Residents of Jakheira – a desert community 300km south of Benghazi – blockaded Wintershall’s oil fields in the Sirte Basin on 1 November, shutting in approximately 50,000 b/d of oil from the As-Sarah field that is normally exported from the Zueitina terminal. Following failed attempts by National Oil Corporation (NOC) to lift the blockade, community leaders have threatened to extend the blockade to other major fields such as Arabian Gulf Oil Company’s Nafoora. The dispute threatens to upset the already fragile relations between Wintershall and NOC.

The murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in a car bombing on 16 October has refocused attention on the fuel smuggling problem that has cost Libya hundreds of millions of dollars.

Greek company Mytilineos signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with General Electricity Company of Libya (Gecol) for a new dual-fuel power plant in Tobruk to be built by its Metka unit. The agreement was signed in Tripoli on 27 September. One of the most important questions over the realisation of the 650MW open-cycle plant is whether Tripoli-based Gecol will be able to reliably finance and manage a large and expensive infrastructure project in eastern Libya while its authority is being continually challenged by an alternative power company based in the Cyrenaica city of Al-Baida.

A series of petty disputes involving tribes and militias in western Libya have threatened National Oil Corporation (NOC)’s ambitions to maintain or even increase oil output, which peaked at 1.1m b/d in early August. The challenge facing chairman Mustafa Sanalla is that armed groups who have carried out blockades and actions against oil and gas facilities in recent months are outside the control of any single authority.