Irina Slav

Turkish Petroleum is ready to invest billions in developing offshore oil fields in Libya, the director general of the state-owned company said this week.
Speaking at the Libya Energy and Economic Summit in Tripoli, Ahmet Turkoglu said, as quoted by Türkiye Today, that “As TPAO, we also believed in it and invested in the best opportunities in the past, but unfortunately, we had to leave. Now, we plan to rebuild our relationships and are ready to invest billions of dollars in this immense potential.”
“We are ready to invest in this potential—be it through exploring new blocks or enhancing the performance and efficiency of current fields,” Turkoglu also said.
Meanwhile, Libya’s oil minister said over the weekend that the country needed some $3-4 billion to boost its oil production to 1.6 million barrels daily. Speaking to Reuters, Khalifa Abdulsadek also said that the government planned to hold a bidding round for new oil and gas licenses before the end of the month.
“The bidding will be in all the sedimentary basins in Libya, Sirte Basin, Murzuq Basin, Ghadames Basin. Marine areas, pretty much everywhere,” the official said. The last licensing round in Libya was held 17 years ago.
“There is momentum in reconstruction and this can only be achieved by increasing the production,” Abdulsadek also said, noting that the 1.6-million-bpd target is an interim one on the way to 2 million bpd.
Libya has the most abundant oil resources in North Africa but its production has been hampered by the unstable political and security situation. Despite the challenges, Libya late last year hit a new milestone in its oil production, hitting 1.59 million barrels in daily output. To date, the average daily rate is around 1.4 million bpd. Before the civil war that began in 2011, Libya had hit an all-time high of over 1.7 million barrels daily.
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Irina Slav is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
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