(Bloomberg) --

Libya oil production has risen in the past week to around 700,000 to 800,000 barrels a day, according to Energy Minister Mohamed Oun.

Oun, who gave the updated to Bloomberg on Monday, has said on June 13 that the OPEC member’s output was down to 100,000-200,000 barrels a day. Production in Libya, home of Africa’s largest oil reserves, has been volatile this year amid an increase in political tension and protests at energy fields and ports.

Libya has little chance of holding elections this year, the parliament-backed prime minister, Fathi Bashagha, said to Bloomberg last week, raising the prospect of the production outages lasting for months.

The country pumped an average of 1.2 million barrels a day last year. Major importers in Europe were hoping it would be able to raise that figure to help counter supply constraints elsewhere in the world. Crude prices have surged almost 50% this year to $110 a barrel, mostly due to the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The increase in Libya’s output in recent days is partly due to the nation’s biggest field, Sharara, ramping up, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The south-western deposit is operated by Libya’s National Oil Corp. in a joint venture with Spain’s Repsol, France’s TotalEnergies, Austria’s OMV and Norway’s Equinor. It can pump around 300,000 barrels daily at full capacity.

Sarir, a key field in the east, is also producing more, the people said.

 

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