Baku, August 29, AZERTAC

Another oil field in Libya halted nearly all of its output Wednesday, as shutdowns at the country’s crude producing sites continued amid political fallout over the leadership of the North African country’s central bank.

The Sarir oil field halted almost all production of around 209,000 barrels per day, engineers told Reuters.

On Tuesday, oil production was suspended at several Libyan oil fields after the Benghazi-based rival government in the east, the Libyan National Army, said the previous day it would stop all oil production from OPEC’s main African producer. The UN-backed and internationally recognized government, the Government of the National Accord, is based in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

The GNA is run by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, while Field Marshall Khalifa Hifter leads the LNA. The GNA and LNA fought a civil war between 2014 and 2020, following the ouster of long-time dictator Moammar Gadhafi in an uprising backed by NATO. The cease-fire in place since 2020 has been fragile.

Libya, Africa’s biggest crude producer, typically pumps around 1.2 million barrels of oil a day and has an estimated 50 billion barrels in reserve.

Almost all of the oil is sourced from the country’s eastern fields, but Libya’s oil revenues are processed through the Tripoli-based central bank and shared out between the rival groups.

Shutting down oil fields is nothing new. Small and large groups have used it as a tactic to demand a bigger share of the state revenue or political changes.

Tensions between the eastern and western factions reached boiling point on Aug. 18, when the Central Bank of Libya announced in a statement that is IT head, Musab Msallem, "was kidnapped by an unidentified group from his house" and suspended all of its operations until Msallem's release later that day. US special envoy to Libya Richard Norland said the incident was an attempt to oust Central Bank Governor Sadiq al-Qabir.

Authorities linked to Dbeibah’s government officially dismissed Qabir and his board, but Qabir said he wouldn’t comply with the decision and Hifter-led forces reportedly gathered around the bank to show support for the embattled governor.

On Monday, eastern authorities said that all production and exports would be halted, though some ports under eastern control operated normally on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Earlier this month, the 300,000-barrel per-day Sharara field stopped exporting oil and disruptions have been reported at the Amal, Abu Attifel, El Feel and Nafoora sites.

These disruptions across the country are likely to amount to 900,000-1 million barrels per day for several weeks, according to an estimate by Rapidan Energy Group.

So far, the drop has not been enough to increase oil prices. The price of Brent crude was $77.83 at 1:35 pm EST, down 1.06% from the beginning of trading.