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Libya Plans to Resume Output at Biggest Oil Field Today

Libya is planning to resume pumping crude within days from two deposits that together accounted for almost 45 percent of the nation’s output last month, the National Oil Corp. said.

The Sharara and Elephant fields in the south west should resume production on Nov. 12, Mohamed Elharari, a spokesman for state-run NOC, said by phone from Tripoli, the capital. The oil port of Hariga, the country’s most easterly, will also start “soon,” because workers there are about to receive overdue pay, he said.

An attack last week by gunmen on Repsol SA-operated Sharara, Libya’s largest producing field before it stopped, caused a loss of power that also affected Eni SpA-operated Elephant, also known as El-Feel, the spokesman said. Pumping should resume as staff are returning to work, he said.

The disruptions are a setback in the nation’s efforts to ramp up output that resumed in July after a yearlong power struggle between militias for control of the country.

Salaries to workers at Hariga, unpaid because of the deteriorating security situation, are “on their way” to the employees, Elharari said. Hariga is the fifth-biggest among Libya’s nine oil terminals with a daily loading capacity of 110,000 barrels.

Libya’s output rose to 850,000 barrels a day in October, from 215,000 barrels a day in April, according to Bloomberg estimates. Sharara contributed about 290,000 barrels a day to October’s production and Elephant about 80,000 barrels a day, according to NOC.

To contact the reporter on this story: Saleh Sarrar in Tripoli at ssarar@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nayla Razzouk at nrazzouk2@bloomberg.netAlaric Nightingale, James Herron

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