Libya from the viewpoint of an independent businessman
Part 2
Oil business part 2
When Gaddaffi took power in 1969 (1st September), the oil production stood at 3 million barrels/day.
Today, after 25 years of embargo, it stands at 1,6 million barrels/day average.
The only company which continued normal production, mainly natural gas, was ENI (see previous links), maintaining the same gas production level throughout. ENI has the gas-export monopoly of Libya through their own pipe-line to Sicily.
Libya provides 25 % of the Italian gas consumption.
The drop in production is due to the lack of Western oil-professionals and modern equipment when the embargo started after 1969 and to something else: OIL POLITICS.
The only people who performed normally are the German oil companies, which kept the principle not to mix politics with business. This lead to an excellent relation between NOC and the 2 German oil companies RWE and WINTERSHALL. RWE just discovered 2 new oil fields in the Sirte Basin.
ENI kept the gas production at a normal level and the 2 German companies kept a normal oil production and even raised it.
All the Americans, British and French kept a very low technical staff level and delayed eternally to raise the production.
Libya, probably the biggest oil reserves of Africa, the whole Central and South-West part of the country is one big oil lake, together with Kufra at the Sudanese border, has been kept on the backburner by the major oil companies.
The Libyans themselves, by lack of skilled engineers and modern equipment during the embargo, have screwed up their existing fields.
Their giant Nasser field, discovered and producing since the ‘60’s, with an original production of 500.000 barrels/day, has today a production of 12.000 BPD of oil and 90.000 BPD of water, which necessitates separation and creates a dirty surface lake.
The Libyans drilled so many wells the wrong way that they created the water problem themselves.
The estimate of that field stands at more than 2 billion barrels possible production, perhaps even more.
The new blocks, leased by the major oil companies, are all too slow to come on stream, and that’s definitely due to politics, they keep the Libyan reserves in the ground. Libya gave BP exceptional conditions for their giant off-shore oil field, giving them 30 % of the revenue, against 17/19 % for all other foreign companies.
BP, promising an investment of 1 billion dollars, hasn’t spent a penny worth mentioning.
All the majors are guilty. Why?
Gaddaffi is much too strict and too powerful in his country and has squeezed, trough the skills of Shokri Ghanem, the maximum out of the majors.
Since the majors have the best of all worlds in chaos, I am 100 % sure that they want chaos and strife in Libya. For the moment they have a very weak negotiation position in Libya, as long as Gaddaffi is in charge. When Libya stumbles into chaos the people at the top will be in a very weak position to negotiate, a little bit like the other African oil producing countries. The people at the top get extremely rich but the country gets nothing.
In Libya today until a few weeks ago, there is a definite strife to get the people on equal comfortable footing.
The fact that the people in Benghazi and Tobruk have resurfaced with the original Cyrenaica Flag of king Idriss gives a very good indication, Cyrenaica wants to grab the control of Libya again and control over the Sirte and Tripoli tribes, which will never happen for a long period, even if Gaddaffi disappears.
UTA flight and Lockerbie
I refer to my previous comments on TBJ concerning Lockerbie. I am not changing one iota.
As far as the UTA flight is concerned, I know of the existence of a video concerning the UTA flight. Today the owner of this video, with proof that Gaddaffi had nothing to do with this, is considering making it public.
Several French nationals would really be in trouble, including politicians.
The UTA flight had the majority of the arms dealers with whom Mitterrand and his son were doing illegal arms business in Africa, on board. It solved a lot of problems for Mitterrand
Benghazi aids-children (Bulgarian Nurses)
When I spoke to a high ranking officer of the office of the Libyan General Attorney about the case of the 450 Benghazi aids-children, he told me that the Libyan authorities were at a loss about the motives of this case.
The Benghazi police had never found the motives behind this case. There were no financial motives and the police admitted to the General Attorney that they had been pretty rough with the nurses but couldn’t find a motive. The Benghazi police also claimed to have found the tainted blood in the personal private fridges of the nurses.
After what happened the last weeks, I think there is a plausible motive: riots and anti-Gaddaffi protests in Benghazi, which really took place at that time.
I also had a question why the Qatari’s were so quick to pay the 450 million euro compensation the parents received, one million per child, via the French and the Tripoli government. Everybody in Benghazi knows that the money came from Qatar.
Today Al Jazeerah, from Qatar, is at the forefront of the anti-Gaddaffi campaign in Libya. Al Jazeerah doesn’t even let one sound pro-Gaddaffi through.
Yusuf Al Qaradawi, the chief mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is financed and covered by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The Qatar government is owner of Al-Jazeerah.
I would not hesitate to reopen the file of the Benghazi children and check the real story, in cooperation with the doctor and the nurses. I think Benghazi doesn’t know the truth and their benefactors are a bunch of murdering gangsters.
Culture and Future
The tribal culture is ingrained in the Beduin psyche.
The destruction of the Gaddaffi Libyan structure towards a so-called democracy means for the people from Cyrenaica a bigger share of the Libyan wealth, meanwhile the “liberators”are looting all equipmewnt they can lay their hands upon. The Korean and Chinese construction companies which were working on a modern Libya until a few weeks ago, are completely looted, they have nothing anymore, no equipment, no office tools, no computers, everythoing is gone, and that is in “liberated”Cyrenaica. Heard anything about this from Al Jazeerah?
Armed groups of looters are roaming the dessert to steal everything they can from the deserted oil fields, all foreign engineers and workers left.
Result total production stop for years to come if Gaddaffi loses, who is going to decide which oilfield contractor can continue, which government is in charge, who is going to sell the oil and control the deliveries?
Sirte tribes will never allow Cyrenaica to control their oil fields.
The tribal system will take decades to transform itself into a real democracy and the man who was intensively working on it, Saif-al-Islam Gaddaffi, who has already prepared a constitution to start democracy and bring Libya into democracy, is now eventually cut short by the Western interference.
Saif refused the political job of “governor”of the country above the prime minister, job offered by his father 2 years ago. Saif insisted on a popular vote by the people of Libya so that he had a popular base.
Not too bad for the son of a dictator, no?
Saif is also the son of a Sirte Chief and a Cyrenaica mother, the perfect blend for a Libyan leaderSaif has fought the old conservatives around his father continuously for years and the Libyans know it.
Leave Libya sort out their own problems AND DON”T INTERFERE.
Gentlemen from Washington and Brussels, you fucked up Iran, Irak, Pakistan, Afghanistan, just to name a few of your successes, back off and let Libya sort itself out.
CONCLUSION
If the US does not interfere Gaddaffi stays, negotiations between tribes are already underway.
If the US Air Force and the Egyptian army, under civilian cover, do interfere, Gaddaffi loses and Libya is ready for decades of intertribal fights.
There will be no Libya anymore, just pieces of the country, fighting each other for years to come.
In this context a small remark:
Azzawiya and Misurata, where there are clashes today, are 2 ports.
The clashes are with small groups of people who arrive by small fishery boats from Cyrenaica. The local population has nothing whatsoever to do with this, but it’s definitely no joy for them to be in the cross fires. The local population just wants peace and I hope they can get it soon.
From personal experience and observation over 10 years.
Hermes MSafiri
Mercurymail@hushmail.com
Flanders /Belgium
27-2-2011
Thank you for your interesting observations. I agree with all that you say. I am a westerner but I firmly believe that the USA and it's allies should stay out, but they won't. Where there's oil, 'they' create chaos. I know there is vagrant propaganda to twist the minds of western viewers, but I condemn the killing of civilians, if this was the case, or if it's what they want us to believe that Kadafi ordered this. Good luck to you and to the Libyan people.
ReplyDeleteI have a slightly different take on the current Libyan crisis. The British conservative (with a small C ) columnist, Peter Hitchens puts it best when he asks, 'What is all this morality in foreign policy? We sucked up to Colonel Gaddafi because our oil industry needs to be in Libya...
ReplyDeleteThe current fashionable rage against Colonel Gaddafi is barmy and self-defeating and we will have to say sorry for it if he holds on to power...
Meanwhile, we do nothing about the great national issue of our time, the EU's slow-motion strangling of a thousand years of independent British history.'
I'll second that.
Atl.
Thank you Arab businessman, parts one and two are very interesting and well written. I saw the link to your blog on Peter Hitchen's blog - a commentor (probably Atl above, wrote out your name - you can't post weblinks on that site).
ReplyDeleteI am sorry Colonel Qadhafi could not stay with his dreams and ideals when he was young. But which of us can?
@ edith
ReplyDeleteThank you for the compliment lady.
I am not Arab but European native, with a lot of mileage in the Middle East and other Muslim countries.
I lived approx 2 decades in Muslim countries.