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Several of Libya’s oilfields and export terminals have been blockaded by protesters calling for prime minister Abdul Dbeibeh to resign.
The protests would not be possible without the cooperation of the Petroleum Facilities Guard, a combination militia and oil company directed by Khalifa Haftar, a strongman who controls the country’s eastern half, Libyan oil Minister Mohamed Oun told the Financial Times.
The protesters “guard the oil facilities and no one can enter without their permission,” Oun said.
Libya normally produces roughly 1.3 million barrels of oil a day. The protests have shut down about 550,000 barrels of daily production, about 0.5 percent of the world’s oil supply.
Haftar does not support Dbeibeh and wants to replace him with Fahti Bashagha, a former interior minister who was appointed as prime minister last month by the Libyan parliament, which meets in the eastern part of the country.
Dbeibeh took office last year through a UN-brokered agreement and was supposed to step down after elections that were to be held last December.
However, the elections collapsed amid disputes about who was eligible to run.
Dbeibeh remains as prime minister and refuses to submit to Haftar’s demands that he resign.
TRENDPOST: Never in the media is there a word of the deadly war launched by America’s President and Nobel Peace Prize champion, Barack Obama back in 2011 and NATO joining in the massacre of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi… and the mass destruction of oil rich Libya which was the richest nation of Africa.