Chairman of the Tripoli-based National Oil Corporation (NOC) Mustafa Sanalla has demanded explanations from the Presidency Council (PC) headed by Faiez Serraj for the lack of financial allocation to the state-owned institution.
In a statement posted on NOC’s website, he urged the PC’s Financial Arrangements Committee “to explain the delay because every day our country loses over $10 million because of the shortfall, and that is money we will never recover.”
The statement signals frustrations of the NOC after it stated last month that it was aspiring to increase its current production of less than 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 150,000 on a daily basis within two weeks following the reopening of the major terminals that were blocked by the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) militia led by Ibrahim Jadhran.
Sanalla warned the PC that “blocking payments to NOC is harming the Libyan people” as he accused the UN-backed body of being reluctant because “the money is there.” He wondered why the financial allocation is not being made because “the Treasury would recover its investment in two or three months, and almost double its income as well.”
Chairman Sanalla said the situation, which began since the PC started to oversee state spending in March, has caused a shortfall in production by the Arabian Gulf Company and Sirte Oil.
The state-owned company wants to increase its output production to 900,000 bpd before 2017. Prior to the uprising against Gadhafi’s regime in 2011, Libya had a peak production of 1.6 million bpd.
