The country had easily been able to produce around 1.65 million bpd of mostly high-quality light, sweet crude oil and production had been on a rising production trend, up from about 1.4 million bpd in 2000. Given this plan, there appeared scope to increase crude oil production up to the 2.1 million bpd targeted by Libya’s minister of gas and oil, Mohamed Aoun, and to hit the informal interim target of 1.6 million bpd by the end of 2023. It is apposite to remember as well at this point that Libya still has around 48 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves – the largest in Africa. Preceding that month, a broad-based blockade of Libya’s energy infrastructure had caused its oil production to plummet from around 1.2 million bpd to less than 100,000 bpd at one point. Overall, during that wave of blockades and shutdowns, Libya was losing around 550,000 bpd of its oil production.

Source: Libya Today December 13, 2022 13:41 UTC