Libya has started producing oil again, the countrys interim prime minister has said, promising that more of it would come online in the "near future"
p>Libya has started producing oil again, the countrys interim prime minister has said, promising that more of it would come online in the "near future"
"We started producing oil yesterday," Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in Tripoli on 11th September. Libya holds Africa's largest crude oil reserves and sold about 85 per cent of its exports to Europe before the uprising which toppled Muammar Gaddafi.
Jibril said oil production, which dried up during the six-month civil war as security deteriorated, would restart in the west of the country soon. Western oil companies including Italy's Eni and Austria's OMV are eager to get their production back online after the war cut off supplies.
In a sign the National Transitional Council (NTC) is also trying to soothe fledgling regional rivalries, Jibril said Libya would form a new, more inclusive, interim government within the next seven to 10 days.
Transitional Government
"The new transitional government will be formed from members from all regions of Libya including those that are under siege and have not yet been liberated," he said.
"Consultations will continue to take place in the upcoming days and within a week or ten days a new transitional government will be formed."
Earlier, Libya's interim oil and finance minister Ali Tarhouni predicted output will reach pre-war levels within a year.
"On Tuesday or Wednesday we will start at Sarir and Mesla(oilfields)," Tarhouni told reporters at the Brega export terminal on Saturday.
"We also will produce gas and oil, not simultaneously, from Sharara and Wafa. We are looking at a difference of days."
