TRIPOLI: Libya’s eastern oil export port Hariga shut down due to a strike of security guards, a port official said on Sunday, closing the country’s last functioning export port apart from two offshore fields.
The closure will lower oil output to less than 300,000 barrels a day, a fraction of the 1.6 million Libya used to pump before the 2011 uprising toppling Muammar Gaddafi.
Libya is in the middle of a power struggle between two governments and parliaments allied to armed factions fighting for legitimacy, territory and oil facilities.
Hariga in Tobruk, an eastern city near the Egyptian border, used to export around 120,000 barrels a day.
Only Brega port is still open but it is used to supply the 120,000 bpd-Zawiya refinery with crude. All other ports and most oilfields have shut down due to fighting nearby or pipeline blockages by rival factions.
The guards at Hariga complained their salaries had not been paid, preventing Greek-registered Minerva Zoe from loading 725,000 barrels of oil, the official said. The port closed on Saturday morning.
The fall of oil exports to a trickle has led to a budget crisis, delaying salary payments and halting development projects and hampering the supply hospitals with drugs.
Hariga has closed several times due to strikes over payment demands from security guards which have been resolved within a week or two.
Libya’s two biggest oil export ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, shut in December when an armed faction allied to a self-declared Tripoli government moved east trying to seize them.
The internationally-recognised government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni has been forced to work from the east since August when a faction called Libya Dawn seized Tripoli, reinstating the old parliament and setting up a rival administration.
