SOC LIBYA Blog

Libya Boosts Oil-Field Security

2013-01-24T14:20:00.000+00:00

By BENOÎT FAUCON

Libya is boosting security at its oil fields to avoid a repeat of the deadly terrorist attack last week in neighboring Algeria, the Libyan deputy oil minister said, as the hostage crisis reverberates through the global energy industry.

Libya will also send more troops to police its border with Algeria, which runs close to the gas field attacked by the Islamist militants, Libyan Deputy Oil Minister Omar Shakmak told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Kyodo/Reuters

Algerian workers stood at the In Amenas gas plant near the Libyan border on Jan. 16, in a photo secretly taken by one of the hostages.

Mr. Shakmak said he had no knowledge of a particular threat to Libya, but said Tripoli was sending more troops to the border and to desert oil fields, and boosting communications capacity, as a precautionary measure in response to the Algeria attack. "We have a concern since last week," he said.

The assault on the In Amenas field, which is operated by BP BP.LN +0.90%PLC, Statoil ASA STL.OS +0.48% and Algerian state oil company Sonatrach, left at least 37 foreign workers dead and exposed a formidable new threat for oil companies operating in the Sahara region.

Several regional experts have highlighted Libya's oil industry—where many international companies including U.S.-based ConocoPhillips, COP -0.72% Italy's EniSpA ENI.MI -0.31% and France's Total SA FP.FR -0.01% operate—as one of the most likely targets of a terrorist attack following the Algerian incident.

Many of the country's oil and gas exploration and production sites are located in the sparsely populated deserts of western Libya, not far from the Algerian border. Following the toppling of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, experts said, Libya also suffers from lax security.

"The government is weak and the early signs indicate [Libya] will take longer than anticipated" to stabilize the security situation, said Tarek Alwan, head of SOC Libya Ltd., which advises oil companies on the North African nation.

There is evidence that heavily armed militias, some tied to al Qaeda, are operating in the country. In September, terrorists attacked the U.S. Consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.

Algerian authorities believe the Islamist terrorists attacked the In Amenas complex after crossing over from the Libyan side of the border, which is about 20 miles from the site, a senior Algerian security official said. The weapons they used were also thought to have originated in Libya, the security official said.

Algerian authorities believe the terrorist group was led by an Algerian national and included citizens from many North African countries.

—Sarah Kent contributed to this article.

Benghazi aspires to become Libya's business capital

2013-01-24T14:17:00.000+00:00

* Eastern city wants to restore status as business centre

* Residents say marginalised for decades under Gaddafi

* Benghazi wants return of oil body to city

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian

BENGHAZI, Libya, Jan 23 (Reuters) - At a construction site on Benghazi's waterfront, engineer Seraj Bushada proudly points to a giant hole in the ground that will make way for a 48-floor office tower that city officials hope will help transform part of this port city into a modern business district.

Unlike the capital Tripoli, Benghazi, Libya's second-biggest city, has few modern high-rise developments.

Construction of the $300 million Three Towers project, which will include two smaller blocks housing luxury apartments and a hotel, was delayed due to the uprising against former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which began here nearly two years ago.

The project is now due for completion in 2015 and is being promoted in Benghazi's bid to regain its former status as the country's business capital and end what residents see as decades of marginalisation under Gaddafi.

"We have to work together to realise this dream," Bushada said.

Turning that dream into reality will be a challenge. Security is a major concern for foreign investors in the city, highlighted by the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in September in which the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

Only last week a car bomb killed a Benghazi police officer, the second such attack in as many days and the government is considering imposing a night time curfew on the city.

Many Benghazans, however, are calling for the country's new constitution - due to be drafted in coming months - to give the city powers to manage its own affairs and a share of the eastern region's resources.

While the revolution succeeded in overthrowing Gaddafi, they argue, it has failed to spread wealth more evenly in Libya. Benghazi is the main city in eastern Libya, which provides around 80 percent of the country's oil wealth, yet the city is still dependent on the government in Tripoli for funding.

Some residents and officials are calling for the constitution to officially restore Benghazi as Libya's business capital, a status it held under King Idris until his overthrow by Gaddafi in a coup in 1969. With an estimated population of nearly 1 million, it is roughly half the size of Tripoli.

"Everything was here before, Benghazi is the best place to be the economic capital," said businessman Kais el-Bakshishi of the "Benghazi Economic Capital" campaign, which counts about 700 members including local businessmen, activists and academics.

"The main reasons are its strategic location - a gateway to Africa and Egypt and historically the people of Benghazi are traders. A lot of businessmen in Tripoli are from Benghazi."

STRIKING A BALANCE

Perched on the Mediterranean sea, Benghazi was the first city to revolt against Gaddafi and later became the rebels' main base before Tripoli, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) away, fell in August 2011.

City officials' first priority is to push the central government to move state companies such as the National Oil Corporation (NOC) and Libyan Airlines, which were based here under King Idris but later moved to Tripoli, back.

"If we can get these back to Benghazi, we can make it the economic capital," said Abdelhamid Elhadad, head of the industrial and oil committee of the Benghazi local council.

"We are trying to restore Benghazi to what it once was," he said, sitting in the council's new offices - where posters claiming "Together we will build our city" hang next to signs banning weapons.

The NOC was formerly the Libyan General Petroleum Company, which was founded in Benghazi in 1968. After the NOC was established in 1970 it relocated to Tripoli.

"The objection is that it is like before - everything is controlled by Tripoli; this is not why the revolution took place," said Tahani Mohammed Ben Ali, head of the Benghazi workers' union at Libya's biggest oil firm Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco).

"There are infrastructure, health, education needs here."

With the country still volatile, Libya's new rulers - led by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan's cabinet and the general national congress - know they have to strike a careful balance to appease regional rivalries.

That plays in Benghazi's favour and the oil ministry has proposed splitting the NOC into an exploration and production company based in Tripoli and a refining and petrochemicals company in Benghazi. Residents in eastern Libya as well as activists and oil workers vehemently oppose the plan, however, and say the whole company should relocate to Benghazi.

"If someone steals something from you, you want it back," Ben Ali said.

Other plans for enhancing Benghazi as a business hub include improving its infrastructure.

Its port is outdated while the airport, which has just one cramped hall, had been slated for an upgrade when the war began.

"The plan before was for 5 million passengers a year, now we want 15 million passengers a year," Bakshishi said.

South Korean company Nemo Partners is building a temporary passenger terminal at the airport. But progress on expanding the airport has been slow as the central government is reviewing previous foreign investment deals in the country before it approves new ones.

Benghazi officials are also considering building a free trade zone and have proposed public works projects to provide jobs, namely for the former rebel fighters who have yet to lay down their weapons.

"We want to look after the factories around Benghazi, we need to boost manufacturing," Elhadad said. "We have an industrial area of around 1,000 hectares, we want to have a real industry here, we want to build more hotels."

Elhadad wants Benghazi to be twinned with cities like Istanbul or Marseille to promote ties and plans to write to the mayor of New York, seeking to attract U.S. interest.

Industry in the area focuses on cement, and cable and steel pipe factories, as well as oil services, but badly needed foreign investment is only trickling in.

The International Monetary Fund forecast Libya's economy shrank 60 percent in 2011 due to the conflict but expected it to expand by 122 percent in 2012 and 17 percent this year.

TRADE PICKS UP

Benghazi still faces many of the same problems as the rest of Libya. Rubbish is piled up on its streets and beaches; jobs are in short supply; and weapons are everywhere as the government has failed to control rival armed factions since the end of the uprising.

However, it has seen more commercial activity in the past year and dozens of new clothing, food and consumer goods shops have sprung up.

"Things are getting better, lots of new businesses were established after the revolution," an Egyptian worker at a supermarket in the city, said. "And people are spending."

One local businessman said retail business in Benghazi had tripled since before the war, but did not cite a source for the figure: "The former fighters have money so they are spending."

At a conference this week, businessmen and campaigners laid out plans for Benghazi's economic revival, but many acknowledged security remained a priority.

Last week Italy - the former colonial power - suspended activity at its consulate in Benghazi and withdrew staff for security reasons after unidentified gunmen opened fire on its consul's armoured car.

The consul was unhurt but the incident recalled the attack on the U.S. mission, in which American intelligence officials say Islamist militants with ties to al Qaeda affiliates were most likely involved. Last week's hostage crisis in Algeria has added to security concerns in North Africa.

"How can you turn Benghazi into an economic capital when there isn't even any security?" Khaled Al-Nomi, a shop assistant, said. "Things are getting worse here, not better."

Many Western businessmen are adopting a wait and see approach towards Libya, keen to see whether the interim government can get a grip on security. Arab and Turkish businessmen are more prominent.

Local Benghazans stress that the violence is more against security officials than civilians, but the attack on the U.S. mission has been a setback.

"Some companies up until last year visited Benghazi," Tarek Alwan, managing director of London-based consulting firm SOC Libya, said.

"Some were actually progressing towards establishing local agents, but since the security is not fully stable in the city, I think many pulled out." (Additional reporting by Ghaith Shennib; Editing by Andrew Torchia and Susan Fenton)

UK HM Treasury lifts asset freeze on Libyan govt agency ODAC (Organisation for Development of Administrative Centres)

2013-01-24T08:58:00.000+00:00

Financial Sanctions Notice

23/01/2013

Libya

Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 50/2013

This notice is issued in respect of the asset freezing measures relating to Libya.

1. With the publication of Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 50/2013 of 22 January

2013 in the Official Journal of the European Union (O.J. L20, 23.01.2013, p.29) on 23

January 2013, the Council of the European Union has amended Annexes II and III to Council

Regulation (EU) No 204/2011 [“Regulation 204/2011”], with effect from 23 January 2013.

2. Those persons, groups and entities listed in Annexes II and III are subject to the freezing of

funds and economic resources provisions contained in Regulation 204/2011.

3. Annex II to Regulation 204/2011 lists the persons, groups and entities identified in United

Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 or designated by the competent UN Sanctions

Committee.

4. Annex III to Regulation 204/2011 lists the persons, groups and entities identified by the

Council of the European Union.

5. The amendments take the form of the removal of one entity from Annex III and amendments

to the identifying information of a number of existing entries in Annexes II and III.

6. The entity removed from Annex III is no longer subject to the asset freeze imposed by

Regulation 204/2011.

7. Details of the changes are set out in the Annex to this notice.

8. The Treasury’s Consolidated List of persons subject to financial sanctions in effect in the UK,

which is maintained on the Treasury website, has been updated to reflect the removal and

amendments.2

Reporting requirements

9. Relevant institutions and other persons are requested to check whether they maintain any

accounts or otherwise hold any funds or economic resources for the persons set out in the

Annex to this notice whose details have been amended. If so, they must freeze such accounts

or other funds and, unless licensed by the Treasury, refrain from dealing with the funds or

making them available to such persons.

10.Relevant institutions must report their findings to the Treasury, together with any additional

information that would facilitate compliance with Regulation 204/2011.

11. Where a relevant institution has already reported details of accounts, other funds or

economic resources held frozen for designated persons, they are not required to report these

details again.

Other information

12. A copy of Council Implementing Regulation (EU) No 50/2013 can be obtained from the

Official Journal of the European Union website at:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:020:0029:0032:EN:PDF

13. Copies of relevant Releases, certain EU Regulations, UNSC Resolutions and UK legislation can

be obtained from the Libya regime page on the Financial Sanctions pages of the Treasury

website: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/fin_sanctions_libya.htm.

Enquiries

14. Non-media enquiries, reports and licence applications should be addressed to:

Sanctions and Illicit Finance

Asset Freezing Unit
HM Treasury
1 Horse Guards Road
London SW1A 2HQ
E-mail: AFU@hmtreasury.gsi.gov.uk

15.Media enquiries should be addressed to the Treasury Press Office on 020 7270 5238.
HM Treasury
23/01/201323/01/2013

ANNEX

FINANCIAL SANCTIONS: LIBYA
COUNCIL IMPLEMENTING REGULATION (EU) NO 50/2013
AMENDING ANNEXES II AND III TO COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) NO 204/2011
DELETION

Entity

1. ORGANISATION FOR DEVELOPMENT OF ADMINISTRATIVE CENTRES (ODAC)
Other Information: EU listing. Not UN. Entity acting on behalf of or at the direction of the
Qadhafi Regime and a potential source of funding for the regime. ODAC has facilitated
thousands of government funded infrastructure projects. www.odac-libya.com
Group ID: 12034.
AMENDMENTS
Individuals

1. AL KUNI, Amid, Husain
Title: Colonel
Position: Governor of Ghat (South Libya)
Other Information: EU listing. Not UN. Directly involved in recruiting mercenaries.
Believed to be in South Libya

2. AL-BAGHDADI, Abdulqader, Mohammed
Title: Dr
DOB: 01/07/1950
Passport Details: B010574
Position: Head of the Liaison Office of the Revolutionary Committees
Other Information: EU listing. Not UN. Revolutionary Committees involved in violence
against demonstrators.
Group ID: 11773.
Believed to be in jail in Tunisia

3. AL-BARASSI, Safia, Farkash
DOB: --/--/1952
POB: Al Bayda, Libya
Other Information: UN listing. Wife of Muammar Qadhafi
Group ID: 11655.
since 1970. Closeness of
association with regime. Significant personal wealth. Believed to be in Algeria. Her sister
Fatima Farkash is married to Abdallah Sanussi.

4. JABIR, Abu Bakr, Yunis
Title: Major General
Group ID: 11642. 2
DOB: --/--/1952
POB: Jalo, Libya
Position: Defence Minister
Other Information: UN listing. Believed deceased

5. MATUQ, Matuq, Mohammed
DOB: --/--/1956
POB: Khoms, Libya
Position: Secretary for Utilities
Other Information: UN listing.
Group ID: 11658.
Status/location unknown, believed captured

6. QADHAFI, Aisha, Muammar
DOB: --/--/1978
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Other Information: UN listing. Daughter of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association
with regime.
Group ID: 11659.
Believed to be in Algeria

7. QADHAFI, Hannibal, Muammar
DOB: 20/09/1975
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Passport Details: B/002210
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime.
Group ID: 11635
Believed to be in Algeria

8. QADHAFI, Khamis, Muammar
DOB: --/--/1978
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime. Command of military units involved in repression of demonstrations.
Group ID: 11636.
Believed
deceased.

9. QADHAFI, Mohammed, Muammar
DOB: --/--/1970
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime.
Group ID: 11637.
Believed to be in Algeria

10. QADHAFI, Muammar, Mohammed, Abu Minyar
DOB: --/--/1942
POB: Sirte, Libya
Position: Leader of the Revolution. Supreme Commander of Armed Forces
Other Information: UN listing. Responsibility for ordering repression of demonstrations,
human rights abuses.
Group ID: 11647.
Believed deceased.
Group ID: 11638. 3

11. QADHAFI, Mutassim
DOB: --/--/1976
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Position: National Security Adviser
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime. Believed deceased.

12. QADHAFI, Saadi
DOB:
Group ID: 11639.
(1) 27/05/1973
(2) 01/01/1975
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Passport Details: (1) 014797
(2) 524521
Position: Commander Special Forces
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime. Command of military units involved in repression of demonstrations. Believed to
be in Niger

13. QADHAFI, Saif, Al-Arab
DOB: --/--/1982
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime.
Group ID: 11648.
Believed deceased

14. QADHAFI, Saif Al-Islam
DOB: 25/06/1972
POB: Tripoli, Libya
Passport Details: B014995
Position: Director Qadhafi Foundation
Other Information: UN listing. Son of Muammar Qadhafi. Closeness of association with
regime. Inflammatory public statements encouraging violence against demonstrators.
Group ID: 11649.
Believed in custody in Libya
Group ID: 11640.

HM Treasury
23/01/2013

New Old Libya For decades Libyans lived under a dictator who twisted their past. Now they must imagine their future.

2013-01-15T20:02:00.000+00:00

By Robert Draper

Photograph by George Steinmetz

The bronze likeness of Muammar Qaddafi’s nemesis was lying on his back in a wooden crate shrouded in the darkness of a museum warehouse. His name was Septimius Severus. Like Qaddafi, he was from what is now Libya, and for 18 years bridging the second and third centuries A.D. he ruled the Roman Empire. His birthplace, Leptis Magna—a commercial city 80 miles east of what the Phoenicians once called Oea, or present-day Tripoli—became, in every meaningful way, a second Rome. More than 1,700 years after the emperor’s death, Libya’s Italian colonizers honored him by erecting a statue of the imposing, bearded leader with a torch aloft in his right hand. They installed the statue in Tripoli’s main square (now Martyrs’ Square) in 1933—where it remained for a half century, until another Libyan ruler took umbrage.

“The statue became the mouthpiece of the opposition, because he was the only thing Qaddafi couldn’t punish,” says Hafed Walda, a native Libyan and professor of archaeology at King’s College London. “Every day people would ask, ‘What did Septimius Severus say today?’ He became a figure of annoyance to the regime. So Qaddafi banished him to a rubbish heap. The people of Leptis Magna rescued him and brought him back home.” And that is where I found him, reposing in a wooden box amid gardening tools and discarded window frames, awaiting whatever destination the new Libya might have in store for him.

Qaddafi correctly viewed the statue as a threat. For Septimius Severus stood as a wistful reminder of what Libya had once been: a Mediterranean region of immense cultural and economic wealth, anything but isolated from the world beyond the sea. Spreading over 1,100 miles of coastline, bracketed by highlands that recede into semiarid wadis and finally into the copper vacuum of the desert, Libya had long been a corridor for commerce and art and irrepressible social aspiration. The tri-city region of Tripolitania—Leptis Magna, Sabratah, and Oea—had once provided wheat and olives to the Romans.

Yet Qaddafi squandered the country’s advantages: its location just south of Italy and Greece, which made it one of Africa’s gateways to Europe; its manageable population (fewer than seven million inhabiting a landmass six times the size of Italy); its vast oil reserves. He quashed innovation and free expression. To schoolchildren, who memorized Qaddafi’s tangled philosophy as inscribed in his Green Book, the story of their country consisted of two chapters: the dark days under the West’s imperialist bootheel, and then the glory days of the Brother Leader.

Today the dictator and his warped vision for Libya are dead, and the nation is undergoing the spasmlike throes of reinvention. As Walda says, “The journey of discovery has just begun. In many ways this moment is more dangerous than wartime.” Temporary prisons are overstuffed with thousands of Qaddafi loyalists awaiting their fate as laws and court procedures are reformed. Militias control whole swaths of the country. Guns are less visible than they were during the war, but that only means the hundreds of thousands who possess them have learned to keep them out of sight. Highways in rural areas remain thoroughly unpoliced (not counting the checkpoints manned by former rebels, or thuwwar). Immigrants pour into Libya from its western and southern borders. Key Qaddafi associates, as well as his wife and some of his children, remain at large. Several new ministers are already on the take.

Last September’s terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi left the unmistakable impression of a country teetering on a knife-edge. Yet despite its struggles, Libya is hardly on the brink of anarchy. The democratically elected General National Congress is commissioning a new constitution. Tripoli is for the most part calm. In its nerve center of Martyrs’ Square—a jungle land of gunfire during the revolution—a couple of motorcyclists zigzag loudly around newly installed children’s rides. The city center is alive with purpose. On the south end of the square, vendors sell many of the new publications that have sprung up since the uprising began. To the east, dozens of Libyans congregate on the patio of a jazzy café beneath an Ottoman-era clock tower, chattering over lattes and croissants. Banners and graffiti depicting the red-black-and-green Libyan flag, banned by Qaddafi for 42 years because of its association with the deposed King Idris, now adorn every building in sight. Billboards and posters bear the images of Libya’s many fallen rebels, with inscriptions like: “We died for a free Libya—please keep it free!” “Collect all the weapons!” On the street passersby exclaim in English, “Welcome to new Libya!”

Beneath the roiling uncertainties is a nation possessed by an almost adolescent eagerness to rejoin the free world. Salaheddin Sury, a professor at the Centre for National Archives and Historical Studies in his 80s, told me, “When we got our independence in 1951, it was something we got almost for free. This time the young people paid for it in blood. I didn’t bother with the national anthem back then. Now for the first time,” he declared with a proud grin, “I’ve memorized it by heart.”

Yet on the desert slog to rediscovery, flag-waving offers only the mirage of a shortcut. As Sury acknowledged, Libya’s rebuilding “starts at zero.” The terrorist attack last September casts a dark shadow over Libya’s attempts to increase stability and rebuild its government. Whether the 30,000 Libyans who protested against militias ten days later constitute a better predictor of Libya’s future, it is too early to say. In ways both obvious and insidious, Libya remains half-blinded by its former dictator’s heavy hand. Now, like the statue in the wooden box, it awaits its future in an unforgiving light.

When the revolution came to the commercial hub of Misratah in February of 2011, Omar Albera went to his family and declared, “I’m going to take off my uniform and fight Qaddafi.”

“You are one of Qaddafi’s policemen,” his wife exclaimed. “The others will be suspicious of you. And what if the revolution fails? What then?”

His younger son also voiced fears. Only the police colonel’s eldest son praised his decision—subsequently fighting by his father’s side and dying in battle at the age of 23. The young rebels the police colonel helped command were newcomers to warfare. Having no weapons at their disposal early on, they threw stones and Molotov cocktails. Once the rebels had begun to amass the firearms of dead soldiers, the police colonel taught some how to shoot. A few were criminals he’d once locked up. They were tougher than the others; he was glad to have them in his ranks, and they in turn came to view him as a fellow rebel.

After Misratah at last beat back a ferocious three-month siege by Qaddafi’s troops—a small-scale Battle of Leningrad that would prove decisive in the revolution, though at a terrible cost to Libya’s third largest city—Albera again put on the police uniform he had worn through 34 years of the Qaddafi regime. He is now Misratah’s chief of police. His goal is to introduce the people of his city to a different concept of police work—namely, that a man who wears his uniform is not a thief or a thug but a protector, that boys should one day aspire to wear such a uniform, to regard it as an emblem of dignity rather than of criminality. The new chief is no sunny idealist. He is 58, with the pensive equanimity of a much older man. He suffers no illusion that credibility can be won overnight when historically as many as three-quarters of Libya’s policemen have been corrupt.

Further compounding the chief’s challenge is that he is not, in the final analysis, the head law enforcement authority in Misratah. “The thuwwar are the real power in the city,” he admits. The police department’s equipment was destroyed during the war; the young men he helped train to fight in the revolution are now the ones with the weapons. “Even though they were brave, they were not trained to be leaders,” he says. “Many are honest. Some are impressionable. This makes for a very delicate situation.”

The delicate situation has vast implications. The Davids who felled Goliath with slingshots now run the kingdom and are not about to give it back to some new giant. Nor do they intend to hand over all of the giant’s weaponry. Nor, for that matter, are they eager to forgive and forget. Qaddafi’s supporters remain in their midst. Some are neighbors. In Misratah’s case that neighbor is Tawurgha, a working-class town 25 miles away, from which government forces launched a ferocious assault on Misratah.

Central to Qaddafi’s vision for Libya was a bellicose populism designed to undermine the urban centers that threatened his power base. Toward that end, he lavished the Tawurghans—almost exclusively dark-skinned Africans of sub-Saharan descent—with jobs and housing in return for their unswerving loyalty. This divide-and-conquer strategy pitted towns and ethnic and tribal groups against each other all over Libya. The revolution turned those divisions into battle lines. Overnight, towns like Riqdalin and Al Jumayl became bases for loyalist attacks on their bigger neighbor Zuwarah. The city of Az Zintan was suddenly besieged by the neighboring tribal Mashashiya town of Al Awaniya. A Qaddafi-backed Tuareg militia suppressed a rebel uprising in Ghadames. And Tawurgha volunteers joined Qaddafi’s soldiers, marched on Misratah, killed their neighbors, and in some cases raped their neighbors’ women.

The reports of assaults on women have left the Misratans blind with rage. Wild exaggerations (was it 50 rapes? 400? 1,080? 8,600?) are countered in turn by Tawurgha sympathizers (no rapes at all occurred, hostility toward Tawurghans is racially motivated). One fact is inarguable: Tawurgha is now a ghost town. The Misratans evacuated the town by force and razed most of its buildings. Nearly all 30,000 Tawurghans now live in displacement camps, mainly in Benghazi and Tripoli. When I visited the bullet-riddled carcass that was once Tawurgha, its streets were empty except for artillery shells, a few ragged garments, and a half-starved cat. The roads to the town were heavily guarded by Misratan militia. No one may return to Tawurgha.

The Misratans stubbornly refuse to make peace. As one prominent local merchant, Mabrouk Misurati, told me in a loud and trembling voice, “You cannot accept those who have raped and killed our sisters living among us again! This is not easy! Reconciliation is what we are asking the new government to do—to take those who committed those crimes to justice. Then we’ll talk about letting them come back.”

This appetite for vengeance worries Misratah’s new police chief. “We can’t put all of the people of Tawurgha on the same playing field,” Albera says. “We can’t do mass punishments the way Qaddafi did. We must act according to the law. This is what we’re trying to achieve in a new Libya.”

For now, achievements come in increments. The chief has succeeded in forming a security council of the more levelheaded militia members and persuading them to inventory their weapons. “We need to get everything back under control,” he says. Too many shootings are taking place—some by accident, like two horsemen killed by celebratory gunfire at a wedding, and some the result of macho vendettas. Too many cars on the streets lack license plates. Too many criminals freed in the chaos of the revolution remain on the streets. Then again, the chief says, they fought valiantly beside him. So what should he do with them?

And too many young people are taking drugs. This, at least, he can understand. “Keeping in mind what they’ve recently been through, many of them need psychological treatment,” the chief says. “Maybe we all do, to be honest. My 17-year-old son—he watched his older brother fall to the ground right next to him.”

But how does a nation go about cleansing its soul? Today in Misratah schoolchildren who once were made to recite The Green Book are expected to completely forget its author, the man who killed their fathers and sisters. “All of the Qaddafi period has been erased from the textbooks,” a local teacher told me. “We do not mention his name. He has been buried.”

The ghosts of Libya’s greatness past remain plainly visible by the grace of a dry climate, a paucity of urban sprawl, tribal beliefs against tampering with the ruins of the dead, and an abundance of sand as an optimal preservative. On the western coast stands Leptis Magna, among the world’s most spectacular Roman archaeological sites, its triumphal arch and sprawling forum and colonnaded streets evoking a pinnacle of urban dynamism. Its splendor becomes even more evident when imagining the marble later stripped by the French for use at Versailles and when viewing the monumental imperial sculptures—of Claudius, Germanicus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius—that once graced the city and now reside in Tripoli’s museum.

Farther west lies the former seaside mercantile center of Sabratah, dominated by a majestic sandstone theater erected at the close of the second century A.D. Directly behind the Corinthian pillars looming over the theater’s elevated stage shimmers the curtain of the sea. Seeing Sabratah as an exquisite representation of Roman might, Mussolini ordered that the theater, which had lain in ruins since the earthquake ofA.D. 365, be restored. Il Duce attended its reopening in 1937, when Oedipus Rex was performed and, it is said, the locals were ordered by Italian soldiers to applaud with such vigor that their hands bled.

To the east resides Libya’s most enduring archaeological rival to the Roman sites: the ancient Greek stronghold of Cyrene, a crucial breadbasket where the ruins of an amphitheater and a brawny 2,500-year-old Temple of Zeus suggest an era of fecundity and wealth. Following centuries of foreign rule, Bedouin tribes invaded Libya in the seventh century. With them came Islam, a spiritual culture that persisted through each and every subsequent external force: the Ottomans, the Italian occupiers, the British and American military, the foreign oil companies, and a monarchy supported by the West. After the military overthrow of King Idris in 1969, Qaddafi immediately set to work rewriting Libya’s history. He spurned North Africa’s indigenous Berber, or Amazigh, people and held up Arabs as the true Libyans. In doing so he thrust himself, the son of an Arab Bedouin nomad, into the center of Libyan identity.

The ancient Greek and Roman sites of Libya meant nothing to him. He equated the ruins with the Italian occupiers. Although the archaeology at Leptis Magna and Sabratah and Cyrene went largely untended, Tripoli’s museum featured whole exhibits devoted to the Brother Leader, including his Jeep and Volkswagen Beetle.

Famous for sleeping in a tent even on state visits to Paris and other European capitals, Qaddafi espoused an outmoded version of the Bedouin ethic, says Mohammed Jerary, the director of Libya’s national archives. “Being a Bedouin, his goal was to emphasize Bedouin values over settled values, the tent conquering the palace. He wanted us to forget about organized cities and highly sophisticated things—even culture and the economy. But the Bedouin themselves didn’t remain primitive. They learned that it wasn’t proper to invade someplace every time their camels ran out of food. They learned to believe in systems and government. Qaddafi insisted on accentuating only the bad values of Bedouin life.”

His rule was one of orchestrated chaos. “There was no routine—things could change in a minute, destabilizing everything,” Walda told me. “Suddenly you cannot own a second house. You cannot travel overseas. You cannot play for a sports team. You cannot study a foreign language.” Many of the country’s most prominent thinkers were carted off to the dreaded Abu Salim prison, where some 1,200 were massacred by their jailers in 1996. Muslim clerics found themselves imprisoned for the offense of seeming more loyal to Islam than to their leader. Qaddafi loyalists belonging to the revolutionary committees kept watch in classrooms and workplaces. Government payrolls swelled with hundreds of thousands of workers who were paid subsistence wages to do nothing. Flunkies reaped lavish lifestyles, while the regime’s mildest critics were, as some Libyans would lyrically put it, “taken behind the sun.”

Even Libya’s geography was not spared. “He pushed back the sea from Tripoli, filling the floor with sand and planting palm trees there—to show that Libya had turned her face away from the Mediterranean,” says Mustafa Turjman, an archaeological specialist at the Department of Antiquities since 1979. “He was the god of ugliness!”

In a single practical gesture to the outside world, Qaddafi in 2004 completed a new lifeline: an undersea pipeline to deliver natural gas to Sicily. All other connections the god of ugliness severed.

Shortly after the first gunshot-wound cases were carted into the emergency room of Benghazi’s Al Jala Hospital on the afternoon of February 17, 2011, the surgeon began shouting out directions. Then she stopped herself. Her ex-husband had always told her, “Maryam, the woman shouldn’t be the decision-maker. Let the man speak his opinion first.” Was he right?

But civilians were being gunned down in the streets of Benghazi by the government’s soldiers. Qaddafi’s men had ordered the hospital director not to treat the rebels. When the director defied their edict, government thugs began roaming the hospital, taking down the names of doctors who were continuing their work. But 31-year-old Maryam Eshtiwy did not take off her white coat and go home—not until the third day, and then only to breast-feed her six-month-old daughter, who was staying with her grandparents. After that the surgeon returned to the hundreds of wounded young men stretched across every available inch of the hospital.

In a single day the social order dictating that Libyan women should defer to men had undergone a jolting tectonic shift. Or had it? Libya has long been a moderate Islamic nation. Qaddafi had encouraged women’s participation in education and the workplace. It remains to be seen, however, whether a country seeking to reconnect with its European neighbors across the Mediterranean will further embrace women’s rights—or lose out on the talents of half its population.

It may well be that years of battling ingrained Arab traditions helped steel Eshtiwy for those gory first days of the Libyan revolution. “Let’s be honest. I’m working in a man’s medium,” she says. Her parents wished for her the stress-free life of a pharmacist or ophthalmologist. The head of surgery—a man, of course—was hard on her. She could not help but notice that during the rounds the males were never criticized, but whenever she presented a case to him, he argued every single point, as if pushing her to leave. Eshtiwy made it clear that she had no intention of doing so.

She had made it equally clear to her ex-husband, a chemist, before their wedding: “I’m a surgeon, and I’m working in the hospital, and I’m driving my own car.” He professed to be fine with that. Theirs was a semi-arranged marriage: an introduction by his sister, followed by two months of courtship, engagement, and then a traditional three-day wedding attended by 700, culminating in vows in front of an all-female audience while every man except the groom killed time somewhere outside the wedding hall.

Overnight his attitude toward her profession seemed to change. “Forgive me for saying this, but men don’t like their wives to be better than them,” Eshtiwy says. He telephoned her one morning to say he was divorcing her. Under Libya’s Islamic law, the woman has no recourse—not even a woman three months pregnant, as she was at the time. When war broke out nearly a year later, some of her family and friends urged her, “Go back to him—maybe he’s learned his lesson. If you are killed in the hospital, your daughter will have no mother.”

The injured rebels, for their part, did not recoil at the surgeon’s gender. Some seemed to prefer her bedside manner, her emotional accessibility. And today at Al Jala Hospital many husbands express relief that she, rather than a man, will be examining their wives. Eshtiwy feels relatively secure in her place. She points to other Benghazi women—professors, lawyers, judges, engineers, politicians—and says, “The Libyan women are very strong, very clever. We’re managing by ourselves without any external help.”

If only she could say the same about the country as a whole. “I’m worried about everything,” she confesses. She prefers to see Libya as one fully unified country, but others in her city, mindful of the east’s disproportionately minor political influence under Qaddafi despite providing most of the nation’s oil revenues, have demanded that the new Libya yield far more autonomy to the regions south and east of Tripoli. The airwaves and streets are alight with edgy rhetoric—“a war now, a war of words,” Eshtiwy says, and she does not know whom or what to believe. Her dismay over the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in her city was matched only by her outrage at accusations that the Ansar al-Sharia brigade guarding her hospital was responsible. “They are peaceful and respectful people,” she maintains. “They are just rumors from outsiders who are trying to destroy the relationship that we’ve just restored with the U.S.”

Eshtiwy remains a devout Muslim who embraces arranged marriages and who has never traveled outside Benghazi. Yet her straitjacketed but steady world has been thrown into tumult. “The picture,” she says, “is distorted to me.”

She believes there is cause for hope. The experience in the hospital during the revolution—everyone working as a team, round the clock, treating rebels and Qaddafi loyalists alike without discrimination, while fellow citizens brought the staff food and blankets—has told her something about Libyans. “During the time of Qaddafi we thought that we were bad people, that no one could love us,” she says. “We see now the beauty of our country.”

But Eshtiwy also senses a gnawing post-traumatic stress pervading the city. It grips her as well. There are videos of her hospital heroics. She cannot watch them. “No way.” She can’t even watch the news. “It’s depressing, you see,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like, why did all these people die? Did we have to be paid with their precious blood for all this chaos?”

The worst is this: There is still more blood. Too much of it. Before the revolution Al Jala Hospital saw maybe three or four gunshot-wound cases every year. With firearms widespread throughout the new Libya, she treats three or four such cases every day.

“Now we are so expert at dealing with these,” the surgeon says, sighing.

When I consider the future of Libya, a flailing man-child of a nation, my mind returns to a 61-year-old man I met in one of Benghazi’s old souks. His name was Mustafa Gargoum, and he made a small living by selling vintage photographs of the city. Since 1996 he had occupied a street corner just a few hundred yards from the Mediterranean coast, where he used to fish as a child. The photo collector’s makeshift exhibit was the first of its kind in Benghazi and possibly in all of Libya. Small crowds would gather to ponder the images from a banished yesteryear: mules clattering down alleys bearing jugs of olive oil; the luminous Ottoman-era Hadada Square, currently overtaken by jewelry vendors; the Italianate parliament building, destroyed at Qaddafi’s orders and now a parking lot. Old men crouched in front of Gargoum’s photographs and stared for a very long time. Their eyes said what their mouths could not. Some of the photos included forbidden visuals, such as the old Libyan flag, which is the new Libyan flag.

Gargoum’s streetside gallery also included posters on which he would write deliberately provocative passages such as: “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” “Free minds of America and Europe, you have always disappointed us.” “The Libyan people are more important.” Unsurprisingly, these dissident musings earned Gargoum ongoing harassment. Every September, coinciding with the anniversary of the Brother Leader’s ascension to power, Ministry of Interior officials would escort Gargoum to a police station and make him stay overnight. “We know what you’re trying to do,” they would tell him, though they always let him go. He continued to display his images and his messages. But the photographs he had collected of Qaddafi’s sworn enemies he kept hidden in his home office, where he wrote on the walls sentiments that he did not dare display on the streets of Benghazi—bitter laments like, “The ceiling of the regime is too low for me to stand!”

When the first peaceful protests began in mid-February, Gargoum closed his gallery and joined the demonstrations, but soon retreated to his house. Eight months later, on the day that Qaddafi was killed, he returned to the souk with his photographs—not just the usual images, but also those of artists and intellectuals and soldiers who had once defied the dictator and been executed as a result. Included in this more expansive exhibit was a painting he had made in 1996, the first year that he had offered up his photographs and sly slogans to the jittery public of Benghazi. The painting consisted of a single monumental figure engulfed by darkness—his back turned, his hand holding a torch aloft. Though Gargoum had intended it to be a self-portrait, he had unconsciously reproduced the exiled statue of Septimius Severus.

On this new day of freedom Gargoum placed the painting on an easel and took out his paintbrush. With careful strokes he added a crowd of wispy figures to the background. He then nodded with satisfaction at the finished product, a portrait of an unfinished nation, its people standing together the evening after the revolution—momentarily blinded by torchlight, waiting for a new vision to pierce the darkness.

Dubai private sector trade with Libya, Iraq soars

2013-01-15T19:01:00.003+00:00

Dubai Chamber director general Hamad Buamim.

After a topsy-turvy year in which trade was largely dictated by geopolitics, Dubai’s overall exports and re-exports from the private sector rose by 9 percent in 2012, according to data for the Dubai Chamber.

The biggest losers were Iran and Syria, both of which saw their trade with the emirate dip by more than 50 percent.

More than making up the shortfall were Iraq, where exports and re-exports from Dubai rose by more 350 percent to value US$11.4bn; Libya, where the increase was 300 percent; and Turkey, where trade doubled.

The overall value of private-sector trade out of Dubai amounted to US$73bn, up 9 percent on last year, and 26 percent higher than the peak year of 2008.

Membership of the Dubai Chamber – which is mandatory for all private-sector firms based in the emirate – also rose by 9 percent to 140,000, with more than 12,700 new companies moving to the emirate last year.

Dubai accounts for 75 percent of the UAE’s private-sector trade, added Hamad Buamim, the Dubai Chamber’s director general. Around 70 percent of goods imported into the emirate are re-exported.

“ We've seen more of a focus on services, healthcare, trade and commerce – these are all still major sectors,” Buamim told reporters. “Real estate is coming back, and there are more lawyers too.”

“We are seeing a big spillover from the Saudi budgets [which reached a record US$223bn for 2013] and that’s going into tourism, business and real estate. The Saudis are coming, enjoying their time, spending more and doing a good job.”

While 2012 official GDP figures have not yet been released, Dubai announced at the end of December that it was raising its budgetary spending by almost 6 percent this year, to US$9.3bn. Revenues are projected to increase by nearly 8 percent to $8.9bn.

By Ed Attwood

Business Arabia

Oil Ministry plans to split NOC in two; “unlikely” to placate Benghazi

2012-11-28T19:17:00.000+00:00

Oil refinery in Brega. The NOC’s refining activities would be headquartered from Benghazi under the proposal.

The Ministry of Oil is proposing to separate the National Oil Corporation’s exploration and production activities from refining, establishing two separate bodies to be respectively headquartered in Tripoli and Benghazi.

The initiative comes a little under two months after a plan to give Benghazi effective responsibility for exploration, production and refining services in eastern Libya was put on hold following protests in Tripoli.

It is believed that the revised proposal is designed to placate oil workers and activists in eastern Libya who want Benghazi to have a greater say in the running of the country’s oil industry.

“In the oil and gas ministry, we have a near-term plan with respect to the [eastern] region,” new Oil Minister Abdelbari Al-Arusi said in a statement on the NOC’s website.

“[The body] will be called the ‘National Corporation for Oil Refining and Petrochemicals Industry’ and will oversee all companies operating in this area. It will launch projects and secure funding for them.”

In Tripoli would be headquartered the ‘National Corporation for the Exploration and Production of Oil and Gas’. The two departments would also have branches in Tripoli and Benghazi respectively, and would be under the Ministry of Oil.

According to the head of the NOC’s oilfield services arm, however, the proposal is unlikely to placate eastern discontent as currently conceived.

“I don’t think Benghazi will accept it”, Mohammed Albadaly, CEO of Jowfe, told the Libya Herald. “They want exploration and production, not refining. There are far fewer commercial activities in downstream, whereas upstream you have drilling, exploration, production, pipelines and so on”.

Albadaly said that the proposal would more likely be accepted by Benghazi if reversed, to give exploration and production responsibility to the east and leave refining in Tripoli, but that fierce resistance is likely to be encountered in the capital either way.

“A lot of the NOC’s employees are older; they have families and they have roots. They don’t want to move and they don’t want to lose their jobs. That’s why there was so much resistance to Decree 100”.

Under Decree 100, the proposal that was previously shelved, the NOC’s hitherto inconsequential Benghazi branch would have been given de factocontrol over the oil industry in eastern Libya, home to some 80 per cent of the country’s oil fields.

Five departments were to have been established, in the fields of petro-chemicals and refining, exploration and production, human resources, administration and finance. Having only been signed off on 4 October, NOC Resolution 100 was in force for less than a week before being suspended in the face of fierce opposition from staff in Tripoli.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Deputy Oil Minister Omar Shakmak described the latest plan as “a matter of reorganisation. We will receive feedback from experts within the oil sector and civil organisations … and upon that, a proposal will be submitted to the government,” he said.

Source: Libya Herald

Canoel Announces Expansion Into Libya

2012-11-22T09:55:00.000+00:00

Canoel International Energy Ltd. ("Canoel" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:CIL) is pleased to announce that it is opening a representative office in Libya and is processing the opening of a local company registered under local Libyan laws.

Canoel has identified Libya as a country in which it will in the future seek to identify opportunities to conduct business and purchase exploration or production assets.

In Africa, Canoel already owns a small stake in Mafula Energy Ltd., a Zambia registered company, which has been awarded an exploration permit.

Andrea Cattaneo, the company's CEO, states "We are excited to start a settlement into Libya. We trust that this fast developing country will be a promising area where to deploy our exploration and & production skills."

Canoel's business plan is to grow through international acquisitions and exploration and to increase the production and reserves from its international inventory of oil and gas projects.

Libya's 2012 total oil and gas revenues are expected to be $54.9 Billion US Dollars.

(source: Libyan National Oil Corporation, NOC)

Earnings from oil exports account for more than 90% of Libya's National Income.

IMF generally positive on Libya, with caveats

2012-11-14T19:12:00.001+00:00

The International Monetary Fund has expressed generally positive views about the direction of the Libyan economy.

Though working from June figures, which made the Washington-based economists think that Libya would not return to its pre-revolution hydrocarbon output until next year, when in fact the country hit that 1.6 million barrels daily this September, the report is generally upbeat.

As part of its biannual regional economic outlook, the IMF predicts a record-breaking 2012 GDP growth of 120 percent for Libya, coming after last year’s radical 60 percent contraction. If the security situation improves as predicted, the IMF believes that economy will remain robust, with growth for next year of 17 percent, easing thereafter to seven percent from 2014-2017.

Given no radical change in oil prices, it says, Libya can expect a fiscal surplus this year, equivalent to 19 percent of GDP, while the current account surplus rises to 22 percent of GDP. Inflation, which the IMF estimates was running at 16 percent last year, will, it expects, ease back to ten percent this year and drop to just one percent next year. This sharp decline willF come about, “ despite upward pressure on domestic prices arising from supply bottleneck in housing and transportation.”

It warns however that if the global economy continues to struggle with recovery, oil and gas prices could fall, which would present the hydrocarbon-dependent Lbyan economy with challenges.

The IMF speaks of concern over security and political stability, but majors on the government’s need to exercise fiscal discipline, while maintain macroeconomic stability.

“As a short-term response to the aspirations of the revolution, the interim government raised wages and subsidies. “notes the report, “Although Libya can afford elevated levels of current expenditure during a transitional period, the increase in wages and subsidies is eroding the country’s fiscal buffers and undermining prospects for fiscal sustainability”.

The IMF also warns that Libya must tackle a whole range of pressing issues from improved education, rebuilding infrastructure, developing a financial market, cutting economic dependence on oil and gas production and putting in place an efficient social security net.

To this end, it says: “The country will need to establish a governance framework to improve transparency and accountability, to better manage its resource wealth, and help promote private sector-led economic development.”

By Hadi Fornaji " Libya Herald"

Repsol 'closing in' for Libya drill

2012-11-11T10:46:00.000+00:00

"We have ordered a new drilling rig and we will start as soon as that arrives, probably early next year," said a Repsol executive on the sidelines of the North Africa Oil & Gas conference, according to Reuters.

A Repsol spokesman said the first drilling would be in the east Libyan desert and added that production was now close to the 350,000 barrels per day the company was pumping before the war.

While the North African country has impressed analysts by ramping up production more quickly than expected to around 1.6 million barrels per day, it has so far had only limited success in luring back security-conscious foreign companies to carry out exploration work, despite its estimated 47 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

A deadly attack on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi in September is widely seen as acting as a further deterrent, especially for US players.

The relative caution of international oil companies contrasts with the speed with which Libyan oil workers resumed work, sometimes even before the end of the conflict.

The slow return of companies could hamper the ability of Africa's third largest oil producer to raise future output, according to the chairman of Zueitina Oil, which works alongside US company Occidental Petroleum.

"Some of them have lifted their force majeures but when it comes to actual work we have heard nothing," said Abdul Nasser Fituri Zammit, adding that the absence of construction and oil services companies was slowing down projects.

Libyan oil executives are hoping the Repsol decision as well as a commitment by BP to resume exploration will encourage others to return.

"Exploration is still much less than before the war. I hope the companies will be back early next year. Now it's being done by (Algeria's) Sonatrach and NOC [National Oil Corporation]," said a source at the Libyan Oil Ministry.

He added that local oil companies linked to NOC had "four or five" seismic teams in the desert and had begun drilling.

An executive with Polish company PGNiG also said at the conference there were plans to drill three wells in Libya next year.

Libya's LIA says stakes in UniCredit, Finmeccanica unfrozen

2012-11-06T08:58:00.000+00:00

The Chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) said on Monday a Rome court had ordered the release of the sovereign wealth fund's stakes in Italian bank UniCredit and Italian air defence group Finmeccanica.

"I am very pleased with this result," LIA head Mohsen Derregia said in a statement.

The assets had been seized in March following a request by the International Criminal Court in the Hague on the grounds that they were held by LIA on behalf of the family of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In July LIA's stake in oil and gas group Eni was also unfrozen.

Source: Reuters

Benghazi attack a short-term setback for Libya investment revival

2012-09-27T08:27:00.000+01:00

(Reuters) - The taxi driver parked outside a luxury hotel in Tripoli says most of his business there has ground to a halt in the past two weeks.

Since an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11 killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, heightening fears for the safety of Westerners in Libya, there have been fewer foreign customers requesting his services.

"There has been a change, the foreigners are much more cautious now," the driver, who did not wish to be named so as not to be recognized, said. "They won't just come up to the taxi rank, they want to be careful. Some have gone, others are staying inside the hotel. But they're not going out with us."

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission was the most serious security incident in Libya since the end of the eight-month uprising that finished Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule last year.

Coupled with a lull in policymaking as the country awaits a new government that will take over soon from the interim administration, the attack risks scaring off foreign investors in the short term. It will also pressure the new administration to focus heavily on security, which could further delay much-needed reforms and reconstruction in Libya.

Security has been an issue as the country's new rulers have struggled to contain armed militias who have refused to give up their weapons since the war ended.

The Benghazi attack has led many companies to beef up security measures in Libyan cities, restricting staff movements, and as embassies warn against non-essential travel to the North African country, risk premiums are rising.

"Suddenly you will have people who won't be able to come because of insurance - companies may not send them because they see Libya as too risky," one foreign businessman in Tripoli said. "That will slow things down. And for those who had plans to bring their families here, that will be postponed."

Libya had been making progress in trying to attract foreign investment and stimulate its private sector: officials have been working to update a 2005 banking law which first allowed foreign banks into the country and have plans to introduce Islamic banking.

International oil companies were the first to return to the country after the uprising, helping oil production return to almost pre-war levels of 1.6 million barrels per day.

But recovery has been prone to setbacks: in July around half of Libya's oil-exporting capacity was temporarily shut down after protests by groups demanding more autonomy for eastern Libya, the source of most of the country's oil.

Major construction and transport projects have been untouched since last year, awaiting the authorities' approval to resume.

"The incoming government's focus will be so much on security, which has always rightly been a priority but there is now an added risk that restarting essential infrastructure projects may be put down the agenda in the immediate term," said Alex Warren of research and advisory firm Frontier, which runs The Libya Report business website.

Benghazi air space was temporarily closed after the attack, expatriate workers in the eastern city were relocated to Tripoli or fled overseas, and a British trade delegation was cancelled.

"What happened in Benghazi has a very negative impact because it may lead foreign businessmen to freeze plans to come and invest in Libya," said Issa al-Babaa, executive director of the Libyan Businessmen Council.

Yet the country's tiny stock market has barely reacted, dipping less than half a percent in the two weeks since the attack, according to Ahmed Karoud, general manager of the stock exchange, which lists about a dozen local companies.

That suggests the Benghazi attack may not have a lasting impact on business and, like in Iraq, foreign investors in the longer term may be willing to invest there despite security concerns if they see high returns.

CRACKDOWN ON MILITIAS

Many investors, including Chinese companies expected to bid for infrastructure projects, may not be deterred as violence has been directed mainly at Western targets.

"Given the current state of the economy, I don't think it's affected the macro picture or overall GDP growth. Oil production and trade has not been disrupted, there are no tourists to scare off and foreign investment is minimal at the moment," said Warren.

"But it's going to make it more difficult to move away from those current dynamics. Sentiment has been affected and the government will have to work harder to persuade foreign companies to come to Libya in the short term, given the added risk they will feel is involved."

Keen to make a break from the Gaddafi regime, the interim government said no major new concessions would be awarded until after the national assembly elections that were held in July.

The International Monetary Fund forecast in July that Libya's gross domestic product would double this year after shrinking 60 percent last year, helped by rebuilding and the release of pent-up private demand.

The attack is unlikely to hurt growth when oil accounts for the lion's share of revenues.

Libya aims to raise its oil production to 1.8 million bpd next year, above levels seen before the uprising.

But no new exploration and production contracts are expected for at least a year before a clearer landscape emerges from the OPEC member's democratic transition.

Gaddafi isolated the economy from much foreign competition, reserving licenses and contracts for his own circle, which makes some sectors attractive now he is gone, including telecommunications.

There are only two mobile operators, Al Madar and Libyana, which are both state-owned and a number of foreign telecom operators have been eying Libya including Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and Saudi Telecom.

Business potential highlights a lack of infrastructure which the new government will quickly need to address. In 2010, 14 percent of people in Libya were using the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union, compared with 49 percent in Morocco, 37 percent inTunisia and 27 percent in Egypt.

The stock exchange has wanted to attract more foreign investors to trade shares since it reopened in February after closing during the war, but says rules on bringing funds into the country need to be relaxed.

"We are waiting for the new government to be formed. Nothing is known until then and we hope it will be stronger in making decisions," said Karoud.

The killings in Benghazi fuelled public anger at the continued presence on the streets of armed units, driving an Islamist militia, Ansar al-Sharia, out of the city on Saturday while the army ordered unauthorized armed groups to leave public premises in Tripoli as leaders vowed to dissolve rogue militias.

Central Bank Governor Saddek Omar Elkaber said the crackdown would be positive for the investment climate.

"What happened at the consulate eats away at the trust that has been gained in Libya," he said. "The steps now being taken are the right ones, it will help renew the trust for foreign investors."

In Benghazi itself, birthplace of the revolution, recovery could take longer, delaying regeneration after decades of neglect under Gaddafi, who fashioned the capital Tripoli into his power base at Benghazi's expense, its residents say.

"The events (are) going to delay things even more. Things were starting to look on the up. That is going to set them back, which is unfortunate," said Richard Weeks, a British engineer who has lived in Benghazi for more than 20 years.

Libya's second city, Benghazi is a major oil port but many foreigners working there were evacuated after the attack. Even before that, the city had seen several attacks on Western missions and organizations.

"Libya needs foreign business partners," a European worker said as he left Libya temporarily following the attack.

"But when even friendly Arab businessman are planning to leave and there is no government support to foreign companies, there are a lot of question marks."

In lawless eastern Libya, U.S. mission just latest victim

2012-09-14T08:33:00.001+01:00

By Hadeel Al Shalchi and Marie-Louise GumuchianReuters
International treaties are clear. The Libyan government had a duty to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and it failed utterly when the compound was overrun and four Americans, including the ambassador, were killed.

Libya's problem though, runs far deeper than just diplomatic protection: interim governments have barely governed, and the latest prime minister - named hours after the U.S. mission was torched - has no effective army or police force at his command.

A year after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, the legacy of four decades of one-man rule - when many formal institutions of statehood withered - and of the popular uprising that killed him, is that an anarchic swarm of militias provides both what passes for official security and poses the main threat to it.

For a year, Libyan leaders, backed by the Western allies, have been gambling they can forge a political consensus which will seize power back from the heavily-armed revolutionaries in the streets before rivalries spin irretrievably out of control.

That time may be running out seems most evident in Benghazi. The consulate attack was only the bloodiest and most recent violence in Libya's second city; the seat of last year's February 17 revolution, it has a history of militant Islam, previously directed against Gaddafi, and deep grievances over western Libya's control of oil pumped out of the east.

As one member of the General National Congress, the interim parliament, put it - so bluntly that he did not wish to say it publicly - the state can probably do no more than contain the mayhem for now, still hoping it can build up its own strength:

"As the saying goes, 'If you can't solve the problem, manage it'," he said. "We need to manage it."

Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagour, elected by the Congress on Wednesday, said establishing the power of the state was still a priority: "We are going to work very vigorously to build our police force, our army," he told Reuters in an interview.

"We have to deal with these militias because some of them have nothing to do with the revolution, and are made up by a bunch of criminals. We have to dismantle them."

However, the failure of successive efforts since last autumn to persuade the ex-rebel militias to disband and disarm, or to transfer loyalties clearly to the interim leadership, itself a fractious body, has left many skeptical of future prospects.

"There is no shortage of weaponry in Libya, but there is an enormous deficit of state capacity," said Geoff Porter, an independent U.S. analyst of North African affairs.

"The gamble for the Libyans was that they would get their political house in order before the security environment became too difficult to contain. The government has lost that bet."

WILD EAST

In Benghazi, the local protection for the U.S. consulate in Libya's oil capital, fulfilling Libya's obligations under the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic missions, was provided by an outfit known as the February 17 Brigade, a collection of young men with rifles proud of their exploits last year in chasing Gaddafi's army west across the desert, aided by NATO bombers.

A second layer of official public order in Benghazi comes courtesy of Libya's Shield, another paramilitary unit born in the revolution and drafted in, ad hoc, by the new leadership.

But as events on Tuesday evening showed, the pro-government forces have far from secured the monopoly on violence which is a key definition of statehood. Others also helped themselves to the weapons left by Gaddafi's disintegrating army and seem prepared to use them against Western and Libyan targets.

When a furious demonstration, emulating a similar embassy protest in neighboring Egypt over an American-made film insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, turned into an assault with machineguns and grenades on the Benghazi consulate, the couple of dozen Libyan guards offered little resistance, Libyan officials in the city said. Outgunned, some guards may also have decided on their own that wrecking the embassy was justified - several Libyan commanders said Washington deserved to suffer.

Among those identified by local people in the crowd were members of a hardline Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia. Part of a wider Salafist movement that favors a fundamentalist religious state and appears to have some past contact with and sympathies for al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia has been accused of involvement in several violent incidents in Benghazi in recent months.

Since Gaddafi fell, there have been fears that some of his weaponry, and enemies, will end up in a wider anti-Western militant movement across north Africa. But such militants are not alone in providing a platform for popular anger in the east against Tripoli's politicians and their allies abroad.

Life and business in Benghazi has been disrupted by sporadic violence and demonstrations, often accompanied by demands for greater autonomy or investment in the east, separated from Tripoli by historic tradition and 1,000 km of desert highway.

"The people who demonstrated in front of the embassy were seriously depressed about their daily lives in Benghazi and not just angry over the film," said Nasser Ahdash, a political analyst living in the city. "The film added to it. But people feel depressed. People need jobs, hope and a feeling like they're not forgotten by the central government.

"If you start with one hardliner, you will get three in Benghazi when they have this depression from seeing that all the economy, the embassies, are in Tripoli, companies are in Tripoli, all the contracts are in Tripoli," he added, arguing that the new government should improve an economic balance which Gaddafi had tilted heavily away from the east of the country.

Saleh Gaouda, a member for Benghazi of the two-month-old Libyan Congress, also blamed the interim authorities for a failure to impose order in the east and to delegate power to local leaders: "The security breaches we are seeing in Benghazi are a direct failure of the government," he said.

"There is no one on the ground in Benghazi who can make the right decision at the right time ... There is no one who can take control of the situation and actually take responsibility."

The immediate impact of the violence is a clear heightening of caution on the part of foreign diplomats and business people, who had already been taking great care in Benghazi following attacks that included a grenade ambush which blasted the convoy of the British ambassador in June. Libyan officials assured diplomats that the security brigades would protect them.

But the killings at the consulate have set back Benghazi's hopes of investment and international favor: "Certainly you will have people questioning whether to go there," one diplomat said. "The overall feeling is one of caution right now."

Tarek Alwan, whose consultancy SOC Libya advises foreign firms on doing business in the country, said: "The impact is great and will lead to more restrictions on travel, higher travel insurance, on development.

"Libya in general and Benghazi specifically will suffer -because we should never bite the hand that helped us."

Security Fears Cloud Libyan Oil Growth

2012-09-13T08:16:00.000+01:00

By BENOÎT FAUCON, WSJ

Heightened security fears after the killing of the U.S. envoy to Libya will further slow the return of foreign oil workers to the country, potentially threatening Libya's plans to boost oil output and grow its economy, according to oil company executives and consultants.

"It's a serious blow to Libya in terms of security," said Tarek Alwan, head of consultancy SOC Libya, which advises international companies investing in the North African nation. "It will delay the return of international oil companies and expatriates."

Oil companies were beefing up their security precautions on Wednesday in the aftermath of the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats by suspected religious extremists in the eastern city of Benghazi. One European oil company told visiting foreign staff to stay at their Tripoli hotels as a precautionary measure, according to a Libyan oil professional.

Following the ousting of Moammar Gadhafi last year, Libya has surprised analysts by bringing its oil production close to pre-revolution levels much faster than analysts had expected.

Foreign oil companies with production interests in Libya—such as Germany's Wintershall AG, Eni SpA ENI.MI -0.33% of Italy and Total SA FP.FR -0.35% of France—have sent back expatriate workers.

But even before the U.S. envoy's killing Tuesday, attacks on Western interests in June and political protests this summer had already caused some oil-service companies and those with exploration concessions to revise their staffing plans for Libya.

That threatened the country's plans to boost output to 2.2 million barrels a day over the next three years, up 40% from present levels. Such an increase would be enough to overtake Angola to become the eighth largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Back in July, Libyan production dropped by 200,000 barrels a day for a short period when protests over parliamentary elections disrupted operations at the country's largest terminal in el-Sider, in eastern Libya.

When it resumed its operations in May, BP BP.LN -0.45% PLC, which has by far the largest exploration plans in Libya, involving investment of $900 million, said the move would pave the way for a return of its expatriates. But three months on, a spokesman for the British company said it had yet to send its foreign staff back because the situation isn't considered safe enough.

Mr. Alwan said he knew of one international consultancy active in the oil sector had that pulled out completely from Benghazi, the capital of Libya's eastern region where the majority of the country's oil is produced, after a British diplomatic convoy was attacked in June.

When foreign staff return, Libyan oil managers say they are sometimes guarded by armored convoys when traveling to and from the airport. Restaurants where they plan to dine are checked first by security guards.

Once Libya accelerates plans to boost production, the reluctance of foreign oil workers to return could leave the country short of specialists in gas-injection equipment—needed to boost production from existing fields—and geologists and seismic workers needed for exploration of new fields, according to a Libyan oil manager at a large European oil operation.

Still, some Libyan officials are hopeful that the formation of a new government—expected to take place soon following elections in July—will lead to serious measures to improve security.

The tragedy "will be an incentive to be more dedicated about security," said Ahmed Shawki, head of marketing at the state-owned National Oil Co. "Other [oil-producing] countries had a worse situation," he added. "Look at Iraq."

The Killing of US Ambassador in Benghazi

2012-09-12T16:41:00.000+01:00

We as many people from all faiths around the world received with great sadness the news of the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi which resulted in the killing of the Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

We strongly condemn such attacks on foreign properties in whole Libya and send our sincere condolences to the families of the victims and the American people. Such actions only represent those who committed them, not the real Libyan people.

The US like many other countries played a vital role in helping us toppling former dictator and his regime.

Here is a picture of him taken a few week ago, sitting on the floor and eating a Libyan dish called Bazen

Arab Bank Plans Return to Libya After Uprising Forces Exit

2012-09-11T08:06:00.001+01:00

Arab Bank Plc. (ARBK), Jordan’s largest lender, is seeking to regain access to its Al Wahda bank unit in Libya after last year’s uprising forced it to exit the country.

“As a result of the events which took place in Libya, we have not been involved in the management of Al Wahda bank since early 2011,” Arab Bank Chairman Sabih Al Masri wrote in an e- mailed response to questions to Bloomberg on Sept. 6. “We hope to be in a position to discuss with the new authorities in Libya how we might reengage our presence in the country.”

Amman-based Arab Bank owns 19 percent of Al Wahda, with more than 70 branches across Libya, and has the right to increase that stake to 51 percent, Al Masri said. He took over management of Arab bank on Aug. 26 after former chairman Abdul Hamid Shoman resigned because of differences with the board.

Former Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi was killed in October after an eight-month uprising that left thousands dead, one of a series of uprisings against Middle Eastern dictators known as the Arab Spring. The country’s new interim legislature elected Mohammed Yussef Magariaf, leader of the National Front Party, as its head last month as the country rebuilds.

The bank is also studying a possible return to Iraq after the nationalization of its branches in 1964, Al Masri said.

“Given the potential of the Iraqi market, it is natural that at some stage we would study the feasibility of reentering,” he wrote. The bank is present in all Arab countries with the exception of Iraq and Kuwait, he said.

Established in Jerusalem

Arab Bank, established in Jerusalem in 1930 and the first public shareholding company on the Amman stock exchange in 1978, posted net income of $360.3 million for the first half, a 10 percent increase compared with the year earlier period, he said.

Arab Bank fell 0.6 percent to 7.15 Jordanian dinars as of 1:05 p.m. in Amman.

Kuwait-based Al-Rai newspaper reported Aug. 23 that unidentified Qatari investors were in talks to buy a 20.7 percent stake in Arab Bank, controlled by Lebanese former prime minister Saad Hariri through Saudi Oger Ltd., Oger Middle East Holding and BankMed SAL. The report prompted the stock to surge the most in three months on the day, gaining 5 percent.

Arab Bank headquarters will remain in Jordan and the lender has no plans to reduce its workforce or change positions, Masri told a news conference in Amman three days later.

Source: Bloomberg

NEW OIL/GAS DISCOVERY in LIBYA

2012-09-02T22:13:00.000+01:00

Arabian Gulf Oil Company which is a wholly owned by NOC reports that it has drilled the F1-NC4 New Field Wildcat well to a total depth of 10,300 feet. The well is located in Ghadames Basin approximately 150 km Southwest of Tripoli City.

The initial production testing from Memouniat, Lower Acacus & Middle Acacua established an oil & gas flow as follows:

Well Name	Formation	Tested Interval (feet)	net pay (feet)	Choke Size (Inch)	Oil Rate bbls/d	Gas rate MMCF/D	Oil Gravity API
F1-NC4	Memouniat	10,000-10,020	20	½	38 Condensate	6.840	62
	Lower Acacus	8,972-8,983	11	½	1,248	0.999	37
		8,298-8,306	8	½	888	0.440	38
		8,111-8,119	8	½	1,050	1.012	39
	Middle Acacus	7,748-7,759	11	½	1,247	1.620	39
	Middle Acacus	7,701-7,713	12	½	937	3.786	39

Source: NOC website

Libya’s NOC Says 2012 Oil, Gas Revenues To Total $54.9 Billion

2012-09-02T20:40:00.001+01:00

Libya’s National Oil Corp (NOC). expects to generate $54.9 billion in revenue from oil and natural gas this year, according to a release posted on its website.

The revenue would come from exports and taxes on oil companies operating in the North African country, the NOC said.

Source: Bloomberg

Libya confounds the many sceptics

2012-07-14T22:09:00.000+01:00

When the rebellion against Muammer Gaddafi erupted last year, few gave the opposition movement much of a chance. The popular view was that the rebels were a disorganised tribal rabble who could not hope to demolish the Libyan leader’s supposedly coup-proof regime.

A year on, and not only have Col Gaddafi and his henchmen been consigned firmly to history, but Libya’s subsequent transformation has continued to defy the sceptics. Last weekend’s general election – the first real poll to be held in the country – was another encouraging sign. It went off largely without incident, with turnout high and violence minimal. Thus far at least, there seems to be little evidence of fraud.

The result, too, bucked a regional trend: that of Islamist parties triumphing at the polls. The Alliance of National Forces, a coalition of ostensibly liberal groups under Mahmoud Jibril, appears to have scored a resounding victory – at least in the competition for the 80 seats out of 200 in the general assembly that are awarded to parties under a list system.

While that does not guarantee them an overall victory – the remaining 120 seats are reserved for those standing as independents – it makes such an outcome considerably more likely.

But whatever the final balance of seats, Mr Jibril’s success is welcome, not least because he fought the campaign not on a platform of loose slogans but on a detailed programme of economic and political reform. Whatever government is eventually formed in Tripoli, this will hopefully colour the complexion of policies it pursues.

Even more than its neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya does not have the luxury of contemplating a long debate about women’s role in society or the political status of religion. Its urgent need is for a restoration of security.

Since Col Gaddafi’s fall, the biggest risk has been that the country might splinter into a patchwork of militia-dominated territories. The baleful example of northern Mali – which is a casualty of the fallout from Libya’s revolution – shows what can happen when ungoverned spaces and private armies are allowed to proliferate. Even now, the possibility of such chaos descending on Libya proper cannot be wholly discounted.

The first priority for the next government must be to inculcate a sense of national purpose, and to build a stable polity in which everyone feels that they have a stake. This means addressing the task of standing down the militias and integrating at least some of their members into an organised national defence force. Only when this is done will it be possible to unlock the interest of foreign and domestic investors. This in turn is vital if Libya’s post Gaddafi advance is to be consolidated.

Source: Financial Times

IMF sees Libya growth skyrocketing 116.6% this year

2012-07-12T09:16:00.000+01:00

Economic activity in Libya is likely to rebound this year as the country rebuilds from civil war and oil production increases to levels last seen during Muammar Gaddafi's rule, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

conomic activity in Libya is likely to rebound this year as the country rebuilds from civil war and oil production increases to levels last seen during Gaddafi's rule, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.

In a report on Libya's economy conducted by an IMF mission in May but published only now, the Fund forecast growth will skyrocket 116.6% this year, following a contraction of 60% in 2011. Growth next year is expected to ease to 16.5% and 13.2% in 2014, the IMF added.

Such impressive rebounds in growth are not unusual in countries emerging from conflict, as the government pours money into rebuilding projects and pent-up private demand boosts spending.

While Libya's government can afford the current high rates of spending, over the longer term it is not sustainable and will push the budget into deficit from 2015, the IMF estimated.

"A more thorough analysis of sustainability based on the present value of financial assets and future oil extraction indicates that, from 2012, public spending will exceed the sustainable, long-term level by over 10% of GDP," the IMF added.

The IMF warned that continued political uncertainty, insecurity and the possibility of a drop in global oil and gas prices were risks to Libya's outlook.

The oil price at which Libya's budget is balanced has increased to USD 91 per barrel in 2012 from USD 58 a barrel in 2010, and is set to exceed USD 100 a barrel from 2013, the IMF said.

A deeper crisis in the euro zone and sharper slowdown in the world economy could push global oil prices lower, which would be pose challenges for Libya's oil dependent economy, the IMF added.

As Libya's imports return to normal, consumer price inflation should be contained at 10% despite pressure on prices from supply bottlenecks in housing and transportation, the IMF added.

The fund said, however, that a drop in the country's high level of unemployment is not likely without reforms.

Meet Mahmoud Jibril: The Man Who May Be Libya’s First Elected Leader

2012-07-11T13:24:00.000+01:00

Following landmark elections this past weekend in Libya, results point to a coalition of moderates and secularists winning the majority of votes. The head of that camp is Mahmoud Jibril, a man once at the heart of the Gaddafi regime who defected to the rebellion last year

JAMES LAWLER DUGGAN / MCT / ZUMA PRESS

Mahmoud Jibril, who heads the centrist National Forces Alliance, holds a press conference in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on July 8, 2012, one day after the Saturday elections

Back in 2010, TIME paid a visit to Mahmoud Jibril, a U.S.-educated policy wonk in Libya’s capital Tripoli who’d been drafted by Muammar Gaddafi’s government to overhaul the country’s state-run economy after decades of one-man rule. Sitting in his large office in the National Economic Development Board, Jibril laid out a vision for a Western-style government that would transform Libya from a stifling dictatorship into a thriving 21st century country. “There must be a legal frame with division of powers, and the right of free expression,” he told TIME then. “We are very late. We have to shorten the time span of things.”

As it happened, it took a bloody revolution and thousands of deaths, including Gaddafi’s, to shorten the time span for Jibril’s plan — something that seemed unimaginable in 2010. Now, Jibril might finally get his chance to put his vision into practice, thanks to last Saturday’s elections in Libya. Although it could take days for officials to confirm the election results, Jibril’s centrist National Forces Alliance appears certain to have won the vote for a 200-member General National Congress, and while Jibril hasn’t said he intends to be the new leader, the coalition’s victory puts him in place to head Libya’s first elected government in 60 years — and the first to emerge from the Arab Spring that is not dominated by a religious Islamic party.

(PHOTOS: Libyans Turn Out for a Landmark Election)

For the 60-year-old economist with a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, that is a most surprising career trajectory indeed. Having left to study in the U.S. in 1975, Jibril later consulted several Arab governments in economic management and had little thought of returning to Libya. Then in 2007, he was lured home by the one man who appeared capable enough of pushing through drastic reforms — Gaddafi’s hugely powerful son Saif al-Islam. In his new job, Jibril told the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, that Libya was “opening widely and very fast,” according to a diplomatic cable written by Cretz in 2009, published by WikiLeaks. In a markedly optimistic report, Cretz said Jibril had convinced him that there were lucrative business opportunities for American companies in Libya. “Jibril is a serious interlocutor who ‘gets’ the U.S. perspective,” he wrote.

Jibril believed that change was possible within the Gaddafi regime, something that has haunted him since. Many Libyans still question Jibril’s role as an insider in the dictatorship, as well as the fact that he hails from Libya’s most populous tribe, al-Warfalla, who claimed long allegiance to Gaddafi rule.

But by early 2011, Jibril had concluded that Saif’s ideas of reform — real or not — were doomed, so long as his father and the conservative henchmen surrounding him remained in power. Jibril slipped out of Tripoli in Feb. 2011 and joined the revolution in Benghazi, where he had been raised. Then, he quickly began pushing world leaders to back the rebels. Equally at home in Western capitals (as Cretz had suggested), Jibril clinched formal recognition for the rebels from President Nicolas Sarkozy in a crucial meeting at the Élysée Palace in March 2011, which presaged NATO’s bombing campaign weeks later. In Tripoli, Saif fumed to TIME that his closest associates — chief among them was Jibril — had betrayed him “big time.” But by then, Jibril’s diplomatic footwork had succeeded, and it was the Gaddafi regime, rather than Saif’s reform plan, that was doomed.

Jibril went on to head the rebel leaders’ National Transitional Council, but many of his colleagues criticized him for failing to delegate responsibilities properly. He quit the job after Gaddafi was killed last October, and began plotting his political future — one rooted in part on his huge success in turning last year’s rebellion into a full-scale revolution. “He was instrumental in getting international approval for the rebels, and everyone gives him credit for that,” says Sami Zaptia, managing editor of the Libya Herald, a new English-language online newspaper. Zaptia believes that Jibril’s tribal background makes him ideally suited to drawing Gaddafi’s old loyalists — including many Warfalla — into supporting the new Libya. “I don’t think you will find many people who will dispute Jibril’s skills as a planner, a strategist and a visionary.”

Even with those skills, Jibril’s new job, either as the leader or as a key strategist, will be no cakewalk. With massive oil reserves and only about 6.3 million people, Libya has the cash with which to implement economic reforms — a far different situation from, say, Egypt, which depends heavily on U.S. aid. Yet countless weapons remain in the hands of potentially hostile militia groups. And youth unemployment remains rampant, according to the African Development Bank.

Jibril will begin with one big advantage, however: a ready-made plan for the future, which he drafted as head of Libya’s Economic Development Board, using consultants from Monitor Group in Cambridge, Mass.; Ernst & Young; and the Oxford Group. At the time those groups were heavily criticized by some Libya watchers for believing that it was possible to reform Libya under Gaddafi — a criticism that proved correct. In an interview on the night Gaddafi was killed last October, Jibril told TIME in Tripoli that Gaddafi’s regime had blocked his reform proposals at every turn. “They took everything they received from us and just threw it in the garbage,” he said. He listed among other plans massive tourism development, solar-power and wind-energy projects along Libya’s long Mediterranean coastline, a drastic overhaul of the outdated education system and a program to mobilize millions of underemployed women. “This is a real road map,” he said. “We have the plan ready.” Now it’s time to dust it off.

Source: World Time

Top Ten Surprises on Libya’s Election Day

2012-07-10T16:29:00.000+01:00

By JUAN COLE

Most Western reporting on Libya is colored by what is in my view a combination of extreme pessimism and sensationalism. It has been suggested that because most reporters don’t stay there for that long, many don’t have a sense of proportion. It is frustrating to have faction-fighting in distant Kufra in the far south color our image of the whole country. Tripoli, a major city of over 2.2 million (think Houston), is not like little distant Kufra, population 60,000 (think Broken Arrow, OK)!

In the run-up to the elections held on Saturday, a lot of the headlines read ‘Libya votes, on the brink’ or had ‘Chaos’ in the title. But actually, as the Libya Herald reports, the election went very, very well (which did not surprise me after my visit to three major cities there in May-June). The NYT post-election headline of ‘Libyans risk violence to vote’ is frankly ridiculous; in most of the country that simply was not true, though it was true in parts of Benghazi. Even then, how many people died in violence in this election? I count two, but in any case it is a small number. In Tripoli, the election was described as a big family wedding, with lots of loud celebration and tears of joy. Here are the top ten surprises of the election for Libya watchers:

1. Turnout was about 60%, with 1.6 million casting their ballots. This high turnout is especially impressive given how confusing the election procedures were, with 3,000 candidates and only 80 seats out of 200 set aside for political parties (most newly formed and not well known).

2. There was relatively little election violence, certainly compared to South Asia, where election day often entails dozens, sometimes hundreds, of deaths. The Libya Herald piece quotes the High Electoral Commission as saying, “…of 1,554 polling centres across the country, 24 were unable to operate, including two in Kufra, six in Sidra and eight in Benghazi.”

3. The remnants of Qaddafi supporters made no trouble, and many went to vote enthusiastically. One of the many wrong predictions made last year by opponents of the revolution was that after it was over, there would be an Iraq-style pro-Qaddafi resistance. It turns out that Qaddafi wasn’t actually popular, and now that he is gone no one is interested in making trouble in his name.

4. One of the last cities to fall to the revolutionaries was Bani Walid, and it was alleged for a long time after the revolution to be in the hands of Qaddafi loyalists. This allegation was always a vast exaggeration. There were only a few militiamen there, who made demonstrations downtown. In fact, if anything, it was the revolutionary militias that controlled a city that somewhat resented them because of their high-handedness. Luke Harding of The Guardian, who bothered actually to go to Bani Walid, found people there as excited about the elections as elsewhere, and eager to combat their city’s reputation as a refuge of former regime loyalists. 46,000 had registered to vote, out of 85,000 inhabitants– i.e. most of those eligible to vote must have registered.

5. The formerly upscale city of Sirte, which had been seen by the revolutionaries as favored by Qaddafi, and near which he made his last stand, decided not to boycott the vote after all, according both to Agence France Press and to the following:

Rena Netjes ‏@RenaNetjes

Corresp alHurraTV in ‪#Sirte‬: “Turnout 70%, women 35-40%. Ppl very very happy to be able to vote for the 1st time” ‪#Lyelect‬.

There are genuine resentments toward Sirte on the part of the revolutionary cities, and locals complain about discrimination of various sorts. They clearly feel that being well represented in the new parliament is a way of gaining a voice and being reintegrated into the new Libya. It was places like Bani Walid and Sirte from which trouble on election day had been expected, and it did not happen.

6. The Muslim fundamentalist parties that were expected to dominate the new parliament may not do so. First of all, only 80 of the 200 seats are allocated to parties, and the liberal party of former head of Qaddafi’s National Economic Development Board, Mahmoud Jibril, is said to be doing well in early returns and exit polls. Because of the large number of independents and uncertainty with whom they will caucus, predictions about the shape of the government are premature. The West is more secular than the east or the south. In Libya, the remnants of the old regime are called ‘seaweed’ or ‘algae’ (tahallub), i.e. the flotsam left behind when the tide recedes. As in Tunisia and Egypt, there has been a lot of debate around what to do with them. They often have a lot of money, and are regrouping to succeed in the new system. Since a lot of prominent Libyan technocrats had been lured back to the country in the past decade, with Qaddafi’s and his son Saif al-Islam’s attempt to open to the West, leaders like Mahmoud Jibril (al-Warfalli) are considered by some to be leftovers, while others see him as someone who went over to the revolution and served as its first transitional prime minister.

7. Despite the faction-fighting that has plagued some desert cities, such as Zintan and Kufra, in southwest Tripolitania and the Fezzan region of Libya, respectively– its third traditional region after Tripolitania and Cyrenaica– went to the polls quietly and peaceably for the most part. Two of the polling stations in feud-ridden Kufra could not open because of tension. Here’s what my Jabal Nafusa and Fezzan twitter feed looked like:

“Women crowds in Zintan for voting …

9:16 AM – 7 Jul 12 via Twitter for iPhone ·

22h Libya.elHurra Libya.elHurra ‏@FreeBenghazi

July7: Election observers at a Zintan polling station. Reports of good turnout from women but no pics yet ‪#Libya‬

20h AC Tripolis AC Tripolis ‏@david_bachmann_

Very big crowd in front of voting room for people from ‪#Ghadames‬ – quite noisy, but relaxed ‪#LyElect‬ ‪#gheryan‬ ‪#Libya‬”

8. A big surprise is that what little election day trouble there was came from the East, from the center of the revolution. Thus, small crowds or small militia contingents attacked or tried to attack polling stations in Ajdabiya, Sidra, Ras Lanouf and Benghazi itself. But aside from a few stations in Sidra and 8 in Benghazi, all of them reopened and some stayed open till midnight to make up for having been closed in the morning. In one incident in Benghazi,pro-election crowds actually drove off a group of states’ rights protesters who want decentralization.

9. Women registered to vote, ran for office, and went to the polling stations in surprisingly high numbers. In some small cities, eyewitnesses thought the women’s lines were much longer than those of the men.

10. Among this generation of Libyans, democracy is really, really popular.

Elections to mark new start for Libya economy

2012-07-04T20:45:00.000+01:00

For Tripoli businessman Salem Mohammed, Libya's first elections in a generation on Saturday will pave the way for what he believes the North African country should become - a new Dubai.

"We have oil, we have money, Libya can easily be just like Dubai," the 47 year old, who works in manufacturing, said.

"We just need foreign investors and hopefully they will now start coming and business will boom."

Nine months after the end of Libya's uprising, Mohammed hopes Saturday's election of a national assembly will mark a new start for an economy that stagnated under Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year autocratic rule.

Investors will be closely watching the outcome of the vote - with no indication of a leading contender - to see what it will mean for projects that were frozen during the fighting and for the vast opportunities likely to emerge in an oil-producing nation with the wealth to pay for construction and healthcare.

Libya's new rulers have said no major new concessions would be awarded until after the polls and are reviewing past deals.

Once elected, the new 200-member assembly will appoint a government to replace an interim administration that lacked the mandate to make major decisions, and expectations are for old projects to restart and for new contracts to be signed.

"There are a lot of projects (on standby), everyone wants to settle their projects from before," said Klaus Fodinger, head of the cement division at Austria's Asamer Holding, which resumed operations in Libya in October.

"If there are no institutions, no one to talk to, how do you settle deals from the past? The elections are a crucial event."

Many international businesses came to Libya in recent years, attracted by its huge energy reserves and a population, which although numbering just 6 million, has median incomes much higher than elsewhere in the region.

But the eight-month NATO-backed uprising sent foreigners fleeing.

While oil companies were the first to return and have helped Libya climb back close to pre-war output levels of 1.6 million barrels per day, others have not been as fast.

Government trade delegations from around the world have visited, vying for future contracts. As commercial flights have resumed, businessmen have also jetted in for short stretches. Most companies which had a foot in Libya before have mainly wanted to get their ventures back up and running as they await a clearer political and legal landscape.

Tarek Alwan, managing director of London-based consulting firm SOC Libya, said he had been approached by numerous companies seeking guidance on how to enter the Libyan market.

"Major ones are seriously interested but they have not committed yet because the situation is not fully stable, economically and politically," he said.

"They have been waiting for the elections so this will give them some sort of assurances that there will be proper elected (authority) to represent the country."

WAITING FOR THE GREEN LIGHT

Major construction, such as residential property and hotels, as well as transport projects are untouched since last year, awaiting the green light from the authorities to restart.

"Despite the fact that most major public-sector projects are on hold, there is nonetheless a great deal of planning going on across many ministries and government agencies, and this is a positive sign," said Alex Warren, of research and advisory firm Frontier, which runs The Libya Report business site.

"It suggests that once an elected government is in place, then many projects look set to start or be resumed."

The question is how quickly they will resume. The fasting month of Ramadan, when daily life usually slows, begins shortly after the elections.

The assembly is expected to be named at least two weeks from July 7 after ballot counting is finalised and an appeals process. Within 30 days of its first meeting, it will appoint a new prime minister who will form a government.

"For major projects and contracts, I don't see it really picking up, in terms of new tenders or companies returning, until the last quarter at the earliest," Warren said.

The election is expected to lead to reforms and investors want to know what those policies will be. In May, the economy ministry issued a decree enabling foreign companies to set up joint ventures, branches and representative offices in most sectors, more easily.

"Businesses are looking with great hopes towards the elections," David Bachmann, head of the commercial section at the Austrian embassy in Tripoli, said.

"However, they are aware that probabilities are high that even after the elections it might take some months - hopefully not years - before decisions are taken."

While public sector entities await, the private sector is flourishing, especially trade. Tripoli's port is heaving with activity and foreign produce is stocked on supermarket shelves. A cash crisis has eased and shops and cafes have re-opened.

Monoprix Tunisia, an affiliate of the French supermarket chain, wants to start opening 10 stores in Libya from late 2012, after uprisings in both countries delayed earlier plans.

On the construction side, small-scale private projects have taken off - homes are being built, businesses being refurbished.

HUGE POTENTIAL; SECURITY RISKS

Austria's Asamer, which operates cement factories in Libya through a joint venture, has gradually increased production since January.

"We see a huge potential - there are the needs of young population and a lot of infrastructure to be reconstructed. We expect a boom in construction activity," Fodinger said.

Gaddafi isolated Libya's economy from much foreign competition, reserving licences and contracts for his own circle, so the prospect of a more open market is attractive to new entrants.

Dependent on oil, Libya needs basic infrastructure development as well as investment in property, consumer industries and telecoms after a fifth of transmitter stations were destroyed in the war. It will also need foreign investment and expertise to increase oil and gas production.

Its tourism industry is largely unexplored, despite stretches of beaches and well-preserved Roman ruins.

Various fairs drawing international businesses have allowed companies to cultivate relations. Industry Minister Mahmoud Al-Ftise said there were plans to increase privatisations, and Libya was interested in more foreign investment.

"We would like to have a participation from foreign and local private business so we can see results because we would like to have competition among the business," he told Reuters.

However security remains a concern. Bouts of violence are deterring foreign firms from bringing back all their expatriates on the ground for now. For those who were once used to living in villas or flats in Tripoli, they now find themselves confined in secure compounds without their families.

Many businessmen travel with security advisers.

Libya's interim government has struggled to impose its authority on a country awash with weapons. Attacks on diplomatic and aid missions in the east have highlighted the ongoing volatility.

Last month, Tripoli's international airport was seized by an armed group for several hours.

"Security is a concern and when you hear of such violent incidents as we have recently, you worry and it may deter some foreigners from coming here," one European businessman said during a recent trip to Tripoli.

"But you have to weigh the risks against the opportunities."

Source: Reuters

Libyan expats cast votes in historic poll

2012-07-03T20:37:00.001+01:00

The first votes in Libya’s elections were cast in Dubai on Tuesday as expatriates turned out to select a national assembly less than a year after the collapse of the Gaddafi regime.

The polling station in the Libyan consulate in Dubai opened at 9am local time with other locations in Jordan, Germany, the UK, the US and Canada scheduled to open their doors every day until July 7, when the elections are set to be held in Libya itself.

Burhaneddin Muntasser, regional manager for an Swiss-based IT company who lived through the war in Tripoli, was overcome with emotion after casting his vote.

“I want a Muslim country, with a free economy, where the Libyan citizens come first,” said the 48-year-old, tears streaming down his face. “I am hopeful of a good future for Libya, but I am not 100 per cent confident.”

The 200-member national assembly will select a prime minister, draft laws and appoint a committee to write a new constitution.

A steady stream from the 3,000 Libyan residents of the United Arab Emirates were ushered through an air-conditioned tent at the consulate for their first elections in half a century, leaving with a purple ink print on their index fingers to prove they had already voted.

Aref al-Nayed, the outgoing Libyan ambassador to the UAE, said the historic day was imbued with a sense of “sad joy.”

“There is joy at reaching this stage in the long struggle of the Libyan people, but sadness from the great sacrifices of the people who made this possible,” he said.

Mr Nayed, who will return to the private sector after representing Libya in the UAE since the revolution that overthrew Colonel Muammer al-Gaddafi last autumn, said he was optimistic that the elections would install a representative government and produce a constitution reflecting the desires of all Libyans.

Fears have grown that the elections could be affected by outbreaks of violence as armed militias that helped ousted the former regime compete for power.

On Sunday, armed groups demanding more autonomy for the east burned election materials and damaged computers in the eastern capital of Benghazi. But Mr Nayed said the following day the people of Benghazi had taken to the streets to pledge their support for the electoral process.

“This is a self correcting revolution, I am always assured by the ability of the Libyan people to protect and correct the situation,” he said.

Awwab Abdul, a 23-year-old oil trader, was born in the US and lived in Dubai for 13 years, but, despite only living briefly in Libya, he was one of the first to turn out to vote at 9am.

“Over the next year, Libya will emerge as a special new capital of the world,” he said. “For us, freedom is the most important thing.”

Source: Financial Times

Dubai Chamber eyes Libyan trade opportunities

2012-06-28T07:45:00.000+01:00

The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry will lead a trade mission to Libya before year-end to assess investment opportunities, a senior Dubai Chamber official has said.

Speaking to Gulf News on the sidelines of the Libya Development Forum, Atiq Juma Naseeb, senior director of Commercial Services Sector at the Dubai Chamber, said: “Libya has strong potential for our members and the mission would serve as a platform to acquaint Dubai business professionals with the Libyan market.”

The delegate is made up of Dubai prominent businessmen and SME operators from different sectors, he said.

“The dramatic change in Libya marks a new era and the chance for foreign partners to assist in the rebuilding of a nation is required. Thus, Dubai is looking to drive investment in the country and aid our local businesses in penetrating and showcasing their products and expertise to their target markets.”

Officials from the UAE, and Dubai in particular, have made several instructive visits to Libya to examine how they can play an active role in the country’s development vision.

“As banking, construction, tourism and telecommunication are presenting major opportunities for investment, Dubai is well placed to assist since it has significant expertise in these sectors,” he said.

“One major opportunity for trade is going to come from Libya’s reconstruction efforts, with demand for rebar, cement, wood, iron and steel as well as technical expertise set to increase. Dubai has a strong industrial manufacturing base and excellent export and logistics facilities, so is ideal to meeting this increased need.”

Trade volume

“One area of investment that has significant potential and which Dubai has a major advantage is trade. Dubai’s trade with Libya has increased steadily since an end to international sanctions in 2005. Then Dubai’s exports to Libya valued Dh2.8 billion and imports Dh0.3 billion, but moving forward to 2010, Dubai’s exports [stood at] Dh3.5 billion and imports [at] Dh4.1 billion. “

Last year, Dubai’s non-oil trade with Libya reached Dh2.13 billion between January and October — a slight decline due to the impact of political unrest.

However, Naseeb added that the unrest had not proved to be as damaging as first anticipated.

“Dubai’s main imports from Libya are precious stones, which account for almost 96 per cent of the total. Meanwhile, Dubai’s exports are much more diversified, with electrical equipment, machinery and vehicles making up around 70 per cent and the remaining 30 per cent made up with categories that account for less than 2 per cent each,” he said.

Source: Gulf News

Betting On Libya's Future

2012-06-27T14:56:00.000+01:00

The demise of Gaddifi has unleashed a treasure trove of opportunity, but one that’s fraught with risk.

By Robert Bailey

The demise of the Libyan dictatorship has thawed long frozen relations with the Gulf that could lead to wide-scale investment in a country whose political idiosyncrasies for decades denied it viable links to the region and the global economy.

An estimated $200 billion of investment opportunities will emerge over the next ten years according to the French Business Council, which recently took a large group of company representatives to Libya. They and others from countries that supported the overthrow of the regime are anxious to capitalise on the goodwill that has been generated.

In Dubai, a Libya Strategic Investment Forum was organised by the Chamber of Commerce recently, it also supported a Libya Infrastructure and Rebuild conference in the emirate.

The big question is whether the timing is ripe for these initiatives. Even though the National Transitional Council (NTC) is proposing a $54 billion budget in addition to an un-quantified emergency budget for 2012 it has little or no ability to enter into long-term contracts simply because it is an interim government.

Nevertheless observers believe that with its significant energy resources that have still to be exploited, and a potential to become an important aviation and logistics hub between Africa, the Middle East and Europe, Libya has the potential to rapidly expand its economic base.

However, there is a growing sense of unease at the slow progress in establishing any firm central authority. Recently there have been calls for eastern Libya to break away from Tripoli and there is concern is that Libya may face years of instability.

Until a functioning national army and police force is formed the existence of armed, tribally and community-based militias represent a threat to stability.

Members of the militia in Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, for example, still hold Saif al-Islam Qaddafi prisoner in spite of demands that he is handed over to the council in Tripoli.

In spite of uncertainties, work towards agreeing a constitution in mid-2012 goes on though the head of the NTC, Mustafa Abdel Jalil has stated that “if there is no security, there will be no law, no development and no elections.”

Even after such elections it may take some time before a new administration is bedded in and confident enough to award significant contracts.” The interim government in principle is unwilling to take decisions with long-term consequences, and lacks the resources to do so which is frustrating for the conduct of business,” says Oliver Miles a former British ambassador to Libya and now a director of MEC International.

SIGNS OF RECOVERY

But negatives can be overstated.

Physically the country is returning to normality. Telephone links have been reconnected between east and west and, at least, in Tripoli electricity supplies as well as water and sewerage networks are functioning.

Qatar Airways resumed flights to the Libyan capital in February. The airline had been among the first to re-open flights to Benghazi in the east. Alitalia has also restarted services to Tripoli.

Royal Jordanian is flying to Tripoli and Benghazi again as well as to Misrata. The latter has a large medical traffic carrying patients for treatment to Amman.

Emirates began flights to Tripoli again at the end of March. KLM/Air France and British Airways also resumed service. Meanwhile Turkish Airlines has launched scheduled freighter flights to Libya’s Mitiga airport, east of the capital.

Air Malta and Egyptair resumed flights to Tripoli last November and Lufthansa in February. Antonio Tassone, the German airline’s general manager in Tripoli, commented that “the resumption of our flights is a strong and important signal to Libya and the western business community that we are confident to be back.”

Progress on unfreezing assets combined with the unexpected speed with which oil production has returned to nearly three quarters the pre-revolution level, mean that the government is able more or less to pay its way are other positive indicators.

Having plunged below 100,000 barrels-a-day at the peak of fighting upstream production of crude is reported to be around 1.4 million b/d. Pre-war levels of 1.7 million b/d will be reached by the middle of 2012 predicts Christophe de Margerie CEO of France’s Total.

International oil companies with existing contracts are beginning to return. The National Oil Corporation has said that seismic surveys have resumed at concessions run by Arabian Gulf Oil Company while fresh exploration is due to begin in the Sirte basin. Italy’s Eni has resumed offshore exploration 100 kilometres offshore Tripoli.

The Libyan stock market reopened in March albeit in more modest premises on the outskirts of Tripoli. The market though had just five stocks with another eight still to provide up to date financial information.

General manager Ahmed Karoud says that five initial public offerings may come to the market this year including oil and construction companies. There are also plans to list the country’s two mobile operators.

However, optimism needs a reality check. Few are likely to commit to long- term large scale investments where there is chronic political instability particularly if property rights are difficult to enforce and where commercial infrastructure lags far behind others in the region.

GCC'S ROLE

It has been suggested that GCC investors may be more culturally adept working within the currently constrained business environment than Western companies. Whether this is true or not time will tell but there is certainly growing Gulf interest in Libya.

Arriving on Etihad’s inaugural flight to Tripoli in January and accompanied by a 100-strong business delegation, Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs declared that “right now our target is to play an important part in Libya’s rebuilding and create viable long- term partnerships.”

The Gulf states, Qatar in particular, played a prominent role in the campaign to oust Gaddafi providing combat aircraft for the NATO air mission as well as material and logistical support to the rebels.

Doha’s help extended beyond military and diplomatic support by marketing a million barrels of oil for the NTC at a crucial phase allowing the rebels to pay salaries in Benghazi.

In addition, Qatar helped launch Libya al-Ahrar in Doha to transmit television programmes and news. The UAE’s telecoms company Etisalat helped restore mobile communications services providing a satellite feed for the rebels after Tripoli cut of cellular links.

In spite of the goodwill generated by such support, Gulf as well as Western interests will be nervous about the Finance Ministry’s review of all contracts signed under the previous regime.

How far this will focus on firms from countries that failed to support the rebels internationally and go easy on those states that provided diplomatic and material military support remains to be seen.

Before the uprising Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company had lined up $10 billion of investments with the Libyan Economic and Social Development Fund for a hotel and real estate developments near Tripoli

Dubai-based Al-Ghurair Group, hopes to restart output within months on a joint venture in Libya’s largest refinery at Ras Lanuf and to almost double the present 220,000 b/d capacity over four years.

The group is also assessing openings in other sectors including contracting, civil and mechanical engineering as well as food production. According to Mashreqbank CEO Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, UAE investment could increase from $2 billion to $5 billion within five years.

In 2009, Abu Dhabi-based Oasis International Power was set to take over a planned power plant at Tripoli West to be built as Libya’s first independent power plant.

An engineering, procurement and construction contract valued at $1.4 billion was awarded to South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction.

Others are looking at new opportunities. Advisers working for Mohammed Alabbar, a Dubai businessman, chairman of real estate firm Emaar and a partner in Africa Middle East Resources (AMER), an emerging commodities supply chain company, have reportedly been assessing the viability of bauxite and other natural resources in Libya.

Abu Dhabi’s Al Maskari Holding is backing a $3 billion project to build an integrated energy hub involving solar and conventional generation to provide electricity for domestic use and export to Europe via southern Italy.

DP World has held exploratory talks with Libya’s interim officials on ideas for management of the country’s ports. Interim transport minister Yousef El Uheshi has said the sector needs billions of dollars of investment for the expansion and modernisation of ports and dredging to allow larger vessels access.

According to DP World’s chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem “we have always been interested in Libya and we are continuing our discussions with them.”

Conversations are likely to be extended though especially in a country where privatisation issues have yet to be tackled. “If they sort out their issues, you will see a lot of UAE companies coming in here, says Al-Ghurair,” but cautions “if it turns out to be a very slow process, they will go somewhere else.

Source: Gulf Business