SKHIRAT, Morocco/BENGHAZI, Libya: Libya’s rival parliament has accused forces loyal to the country’s official government of trying to arrange a crude sale outside the state oil firm NOC, a deputy speaker said Thursday.
Saleh al-Makhzoum said his parliament would complain to the U.N. special envoy for Libya about what he called an attempted crude lifting by a tanker trying to dock at Es Sider port.
Ali al-Hassi, spokesman for a security force controlling Es Sider, denied they had tried to sell crude bypassing Tripoli. “Es Sider port and the entire oil crescent area has been declared a military zone and is under force majeure,” he said. Hassi’s force is loyal to Libya’s internationally recognized government and parliament based in eastern Libya.
Makhzoum insisted a tanker had tried to lift crude at Es Sider, a port in the so-called oil crescent area home to the country’s biggest export ports in eastern Libya.
“It is against the law, and we know that tanker is called Vito and belongs to an Emirati company,” Makhzoum told Reuters in Morocco.
Ship tracking data showed the Panama-flagged tanker was currently sailing past Crete, Greece.
Tripoli-based National Oil Corp, the state oil firm, had earlier said unknown traders had offered Libyan crude outside the official channels. It did not elaborate but warned against buying Libyan oil bypassing Tripoli.
A year ago, the same security force in Es Sider had tried selling crude on its own by loading oil on tankers, leading to a major standoff with the central government in Tripoli. U.S. navy special forces eventually stormed the tanker off Cyprus and returned the cargo to Tripoli.
The oil force led by Ibrahim Jathran was then a rebel group campaigning for eastern autonomy. Now he’s become a partner of the recognized government, opposing a rival government and parliament based in Tripoli. Political loyalties and alliances often change in Libya where both sides fight over control of the vital energy sector.
Meanwhile, U.N. Security Council member Spain called for a deal to end unrest in Libya within weeks and said a U.N. resolution would be needed to approve any NATO intervention.
Concerned by violence and the rise of Islamist groups in Libya, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo appeared in Madrid alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to tout security cooperation in the region.
A NATO air campaign in Libya in 2011 backed the uprising that ousted and killed dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Western powers including Spain have insisted on a political solution but have not definitively ruled out another intervention.
Garcia-Margallo said that if U.N.-brokered talks led to the creation of a “unity government” in Libya, that body could then “request the support that it considers appropriate in Libya, which is the top item on our agenda.”
“Once such a resolution is passed, it will be up to the bodies within the alliance to take the most appropriate decision to achieve stability in Libya, which is an urgent matter,” he said.
“We are not talking months, we are talking weeks, to reach a solution,” he said, warning that the security situation in Libya “is posing a risk to the stability of a whole region around us.”
Separately, Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani was stopped by airport guards from getting on a plane to Tunis in protest against his choice of interior minister, officials said. He later returned to his base.
The guards were unhappy with Thani’s appointment of Economy Minister Mounir Ali Asr as caretaker interior minister, the officials added. They demanded the job go to a southerner, instead of the current western holder.