For nine months, the United Nations has attempted to force the so-called General National Accord (GNA) government on Libya. Despite myriad international pronouncements of support, the GNA has failed spectacularly to take hold on the ground. Regional squabbles, constitutional complexities affecting its legitimacy and its lack of institutional capacity impede the GNA's progress. Lurking behind all these proximal causes are its lack of revenue. It has never controlled Libya's key nodes of oil production and exports.
On Sept. 11, forces aligned with Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the GNA's most prominent rival, seized control of most of Libya's oil crescent ports — evicting the remaining pockets of Ibrahim Jadhran's federalists. In the wake of this momentous action, the two-year hiatus on international oil exports from Ras Lanuf, Sidra and Zueitina was speedily brought to an end. Since then, tankers have been loaded (mostly with crude that has been in deep storage in tanker farms) and funds for repairing oil facilities have been allocated. Soon, revenue from these oil shipments will flow back into Libya's coffers. To whom in Libya's complex, fractured institutional landscape will these funds go, and why are they being allowed to flow?
On Sept. 21, the same day that the first shipment of crude oil since 2014 left Ras Lanuf for Italy, the National Oil Corporation announced it had received a payment of 310 million Libyan dinars ($224 million) from the UN-backed Presidential Council — which functions as the GNA's executive body — to carry out repairs and maintenance at the oil facilities, and would receive another 620 million dinars paid in two equal amounts by the end of the year. The following day, 22 countries and international bodies — including key players such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Russia — issued a joint communique on Libya, reiterating commitment to the Libyan Political Agreement signed in Skhirat, Morocco, last year, as well as welcoming the nominal transfer of control of ports in the oil crescent to the National Oil Corporation and the resumption of exports.
On the face of it, after months of mishaps and accidents, lack of National Oil Corporation funding and diminished oil revenues, the reopening of these ports should be a cause for national celebration, especially given the dire economic straits Libya is in.
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