Monday, August 22, 2011

Libyan Oil Production

It looks like the Libyan revolutionaries have taken Tripoli:
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power dissolved with astonishing speed on Monday as rebels marched into the capital and arrested two of his sons, while residents raucously celebrated the prospective end of his four-decade-old rule. Colonel Qaddafi’s precise whereabouts remained unknown and news reports said loyalist forces still held pockets of the city, stubbornly resisting the rebel advance.

In the central Green Square, the site of many manufactured rallies in support of Colonel Qaddafi, jubilant Libyans tore down posters of him and stomped on them. The rebel leadership announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered and that their forces controlled many parts of the city, but not Colonel Qaddafi’s leadership compound.
Obviously this is excellent news for the Libyan people and it is devoutly to be hoped that they can now begin the long and difficult process of developing a more benevolent form of government that can stabilize the country and realize the aspirations of it's people.

Any government is probably going to want to do something about the graph up top, which shows that Libyan oil production has now fallen almost to zero as of July.  The new state will need revenues and in Libya those must come primarily from oil.  It will probably take a number of months at best to restore sufficient order for the oil to begin flowing again.

When it does, that will help the global macroeconomy also.

5 comments:

Alexander Ac said...

Who helps Syria?

Alexander Ac said...

"When it does, that will help the global macroeconomy also."

-- it will also help to increase CO2 emissions and speed global warming.

Anonymous said...

de·voutAdjective/diˈvout/
1. Having or showing deep religious feeling or commitment.

Why drag religion into the discussion?

KLR said...

Thanks, Stuart. Had been wondering what Libya's curve looked like; did this last longer than Iran's race to the bottom? Gathered some articles on that but they got lost in a hard rebooot. Seems like the 1978 strike took almost everything offline; then a couple million barrels came back; then war broke out while demand cratered and they were down to 500 kb/d.

Heading Out pointed out the lackluster performance of post-revolutionary producing nations in his post A gentle correcting cough at Dr Saleri. Today the
Financial Times informs us that Full Libyan oil ouput could be years away.



Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3e3e2974-ccd7-11e0-88fe-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1VmY3Hyo7

Consultants and industry executives believe the fall of the 41-year-old regime of Muammar Gaddafi could see Libya producing 300,000 b/d during the next three months from fields in the east, which have been under rebel control since the start of the civil war, and the remote south-west desert. But ramping up output to pre-crisis levels would take years under the most benign scenario.
“I’m sceptical that Libya will return to its pre-war output until 2013 or well beyond,” says Ben Cahill, an expert on Libya at oil consultants PFC Energy in Washington, echoing a widely held industry’s view.


Iran and Iraq plateaued through the 80s at ca. 33% and 25% of their respective 1980 levels, to take some simple numbers from eyeballing HO's charts. FT article has outlooks from various companies; Repsol seems to think they'll be back in business by October. But ports have been damaged, looting is happening, etc.

Bill Hicks said...

"Obviously this is excellent news for the Libyan people"

How can you say that? It's more than likely the new regime will turn out to be just just as bad as the old one. Just a couple of weeks ago they were wantonly executing one of their own senior commanders.

Most probably, the new group of thugs will simply terrorize the supporters of the old group of thugs along with anyone who tries to obstruct the wanton rape of Libya's natural resources for the benefit of European and American oil companies.