Where the Libya oil spent?

By Stanley Reed

For the OMV Austrian petroleum company, the Libya has long been its territory of overseas prices. 33,000 Barrels daily production represents 10% of the production company - until now. With the conflict that raged, stopped oil arising out of the important Shateira area of OMV in the East and other areas. OMV has no idea when he will return. "We have no precise information at all." We have no official contact at all; We are dependent on random contact, "Director General Gerhard Roiss said to journalists on March 31.

Other companies with a large Libyan presence are trying to save their operations on a thin line between the regime and the rebels. ENI (E Italian) has spent years working with the Government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and has supported charities headed by son of Qathafi Saif. Yet, in March, Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni said that it does not work with Qathafi: it is in business with the national oil company of the Libya and will continue to negotiate with them that everyone is in charge.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Italian, Franco Frattini, has stated publicly that Eni is also talking to the rebels. "Eni is keen to engage and get early, said Guma El-Gamaty, a Libyan opposition spokesman in London." The Government of the Italy, the country which is the largest market for Libyan gas of Eni, publicly disavowed the Qathafi regime. Although Eni has closed most of the production, continues to provide gas to the capital of Tripoli, perhaps to cover its Paris while Qathafi hangs on.

At this time, prolonged conflict seems likely with power divided between regime weakened Qathafi to Tripoli in the West and eastern rebels. Unlike most foreign companies whose fields are located in the Centre of the country or the East, a large part of the production of Eni is fields in the West, where Qathafi still has power. ENI has built a factory for $ 9 billion of State-of-the-art at Mellitah, on the West coast of Tripoli. It deals with natural gas and pumps under the Mediterranean through the Greenstream pipeline in Italy of, which gets 10 percent of its gas from Libya. The company has paid the Libyan regime 1 billion in 2008 for an extension of 25 years of its contracts, with as 28 billion dollars in additional investment envisaged. ENI "risks angering both not sides no suppression of ma what they do," said Nicolo Sartori, an analyst at Rome IAI Institute of International Affairs.

Most foreign companies are not taking sides. This seems to be particularly true of the United States companies, among them Marathon Oil (MRO), ConocoPhillips (COP) and Hess (HES). These three times operated in common in the Oasis, a joint venture group which agreed to pay the Libyans 1.8 billion in 2005 to retrieve the properties they had left because of the sanctions and political pressure in 1986. Together the three would produce about 90,000 barrels a day of their $ 13 million acres this year. They maintain their plans and their views on the conflict in themselves. In a typical comment, a spokesman for ConocoPhillips, which loses about 45,000 barrels per day in production, said, "we are not anyone is available to discuss the Libya.".

The absence of Libyan crude put pressure on refineries around the Mediterranean. He is known as the best gross for the manufacture of gasoline, and only a few crude in Nigeria, Algeria and Angola are suitable substitutes. Libya sells only now the occasional cargo of crude. El-Gamaty, the rebel spokesman, said one was recently sold to the Qatar, which acts as an intermediary.

Since the beginning of the shooting, multinational corporations have been personal shipping non-Libyan production to a handful of slowdown. Shell (RDS).(A), which has been explored in Libya, stolen his people out on a Chartered Airbus Egypt. Schlumberger (SLB), giant oil field services, took more than 300 people, including about 30 employees of other companies, on a fast ferry to Malta. Schlumberger employees at a desert camp were protected by the local community of indeterminate loyalty looters, according to Andrew Gould, CEO of Schlumberger.

David l. Goldwyn, a former Assistant Secretary of energy for International Affairs and a specialist in Libya, tick off a long list of conditions, ranging from the lifting of the sanctions to the restoration of security, which must be met prior to foreign companies to return and begin to produce again. "Currently, the uncertainties are so numerous it is difficult to predict the relaunch of the Jamahiriya production in the short term," says Goldwyn, who leads the global strategies Goldwyn in Washington.

The bottom line: Oil companies face a challenge: to resume production as they try to keep the channels open to the Qathafi and the rebels.

With Zoe Schneeweiss, Alessandra Migliaccio and Maher Chmaytelli. Reed is a reporter-at-large for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek.

View the original article here