The Sentry
The End of NOC Bartering
In February 2025, shortly after taking office, incoming NOC chairman Masoud Suleiman announced the end of the oil barter system, effective March 1, 2025. The NOC had conducted billions of dollars in crude-for-fuel swaps annually between 2021 and 2024, apparently without transparent accounting. With his announcement, Suleiman committed the NOC to using public tenders to sell crude oil and purchase fuel through separate transactions — a policy he said aimed at achieving better governance.
This decision was an acknowledgment that the barter system used between 2021 and 2024 under two successive NOC chairmen lacked both transparency and competitiveness. The possibility that the NOC gave away excessive national wealth via these swaps underscores the need for a full investigation into the barter process used during that period. In fact, data from high-volume years like 2023 and 2024 suggests that the NOC paid far above prevailing market rates in its fuel-for-crude swaps, with economically unjustifiable overpayments potentially reaching nearly $1 billion annually.
An inquiry must determine exactly why the NOC overpaid, and, crucially, it must identify the actors who profited from these overpayments. Formally ending the oil barter system isn’t enough to solve Libya’s fuel smuggling problem, however. Although the NOC’s fuel imports from January September 2025 decreased by about 8% compared to the same period in 2024, their volume remains far above the country’s legitimate needs.
These excessive fuel imports continue to feed a resilient smuggling sector. Efforts are required to reduce imports further and increase transparency, including regarding how fuel imports are funded. In response to The Sentry’s request for comment about the transparency of its barter transactions from 2021 through 2024, the NOC stated that pricing committees had overseen the process. The NOC added that these committees determined prices based on internationally recognized global bulletins and that the competition for the barter transactions was conducted transparently with major international companies submitting bids.
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Illegally Reexported Fuel
Every day, millions of liters of imported fuel are illegally reexported via maritime routes to Malta, Albania, Italy, Turkey, and beyond. While some of that activity takes place in western Libya, it is far more extensive in the east—particularly through ship-to-ship transfers.
In a typical example, the NOC legally imports fuel into Benghazi’s modern port, but illicit actors load it onto a vessel at the city’s old harbor. At sea, the fuel is transferred to another ship, which then delivers it to its final destination.
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Major Fuel Depots in Western Area
1- Zuwarah’s fuel depot
In the mid-2010s, Zuwarah—a coastal city near the Tunisian border—served as a major hub for reexporting subsidized fuel by land and sea. In 2023, an incident involving a ship called Serdar revealed that the city’s seaport was still being used for illegal fuel exports. Despite security changes at the Ras Jdir border crossing in 2024, local sources told The Sentry that smuggling through Zuwarah continues, albeit at a lower rate than before.
2- Misrata’s fuel depot
located just south of the commercial port and connected to the sea by an underground pipeline, is one of the largest in Libya. From there, the product is transported by trucks to municipalities in the immediate vicinity, as well as to towns and cities in southwestern Libya. Smuggling networks tap into this transport network to move fuel into sub-Saharan African markets, such as Chad and Niger.
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The LAAF Network in Eastern Area
This network profits from moving Libya’s subsidized fuel to the southern borders in two main ways: First, its brigades impose taxes at checkpoints along north-south routes, collecting fees from small-scale smugglers, including large makeshift trucks driven by Tubu actors. Second, the LAAF diverts officially distributed fuel; by restricting operating hours at legitimate stations, it ensures that surpluses are rerouted south for illicit gain.
Tubu smugglers drive the non-official fuel truck across the southern border under Haftar coalition protection, official fuel trucks head south. A large portion of the foreign-refined fuel delivered to Benghazi’s port is kept at a storage facility located in the northern outskirts of the city.
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The 101st Infantry Battalion
This Battalion is a unit of the LAAF’s Brigade Tareq bin Ziyad, suppresses popular activism and perceived opposition across southwestern Libya. Known in this region as the long arm of Saddam Haftar, the battalion enforced a QR code system that allowed each civilian car owner to buy subsidized fuel only once every five days.
This is one of several mechanisms that the LAAF has used to control both the legal distribution and illicit diversion of fuel. As fuel shortages grew more acute and public complaints mounted across southwestern Libya, Saddam Haftar eliminated the QR code system in the southern region in October 2025, a decision likely motivated by a desire to restore his deteriorating popular standing.
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A $6.7 Billion per Year Issue
Independent maritime data service Kpler indicates that in 2024, Libya imported an average of about 234,000 barrels of fuel per day, equating to roughly 37.2 million liters daily. In addition to the imported fuel, another 13.8 million liters a day is produced domestically.
Electricity generation in Libya, which relies on natural gas, crude oil, and fuel, requires about 5.8 million liters of fuel each day. Beyond electricity generation, heavy industry, and transport activities — such as manufacturing, steel plants, agriculture, maritime, and aviation — likely consume 2.4 million liters per day.
Aside from these categories, Libya has about 3.5 million motor vehicles, which consume roughly 15.7 million liters per day, assuming that each vehicle travels 20,000 kilometers per year on average. All in all, the combined fuel consumption for electricity generation (5.8 million liters), other industrial activities (2.4 million liters), and motor vehicles (15.7 million liters) stands at around 23.9 million liters per day.
Given the availability of roughly 50.9 million liters per day, this leaves 27 million liters per day likely diverted. The fuel imports of 37.2 million liters per day cost the NOC $9.46 billion worth of crude oil per year, which works out to be $0.70 per liter. As for the fuel produced domestically by the NOC, its fair valuation is $0.62 per liter, based on average Mediterranean market prices in 2024. From these elements, one can deduce that approximately $6.7 billion worth of fuel was smuggled out of the country in 2024.
This means that the national wealth presently lost to fuel smuggling would be sufficient for Libya to more than triple its spending on both healthcare and education. In fact, the cost to the Libyan population is even higher, given that many legitimate consumers in peripheral areas must pay inflated prices for what should be subsidized fuel — markups not reflected in any official statistics.
Plus, even in cases where legitimate consumers do access the subsidized fuel and pay 0.15 dinars ($0.03) per liter, most of the collected payments end up unaccounted for, leaving the state with virtually no revenue from fuel sales. In response to a request for comment, the NOC denied The Sentry’s estimate of diverted fuel, adding that the NOC is not responsible for managing land or sea ports.14
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