Home Features As Libya Oil Output Hits 12-Year High, Revenues Trickle In
Author: Charles Wachira | Photos: Ever Stock
Central bank bottlenecks and massive import costs delay the impact of a $4B windfall.
War-torn Libya is pumping oil at its fastest pace in more than a decade, averaging about 1.4 million barrels per day in April, according to National Oil Corp. operating data.
Still, refining capacity, distribution networks, and subsidy-financed imports remain strained by years of institutional division since the 2011 conflict, when production fell sharply from about 1.5 million barrels per day to near-collapse levels during the civil war.
The imbalance reflects Libya’s fragmented downstream system, where crude oil exports continue but refining capacity, distribution networks, and subsidy-financed imports remain strained by years of institutional disruption since the 2011 uprising and the overthrow of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi, when production fell sharply.
The state-owned NOC reported $2.82 billion in gross oil revenue in April, followed by nearly $4 billion in May, the highest monthly intake in over 10 years, according to local energy reports citing official data. Crude flows through Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, and Zawiya terminals into Mediterranean markets, where it is priced against Brent-linked benchmarks.
Translating stronger production and upstream earnings into direct benefits to the state and its people remains challenging, however.
The May surge coincided with a sharp increase in fuel imports; NOC Chairman Masoud Suleman confirmed the contracting of 17 gasoline tankers, the highest monthly fuel import volume in Libya’s history. Even as import activity rose, several cities in western Libya reported fuel shortages and long queues at filling stations, exposing persistent breakdowns in domestic distribution.
The cash conversion of oil earnings is still structurally uneven. In April, only $1.91 billion of $2.82 billion in gross revenue reached the Central Bank of Libya after fuel-import and settlement deductions routed through the Libyan Foreign Bank mechanism. That left roughly $910 million stuck within upstream settlement layers awaiting final transfer into the sovereign liquidity system .
On June 3, the central bank launched a $3.5 billion foreign currency allocation program to cover letters of credit (LOCs), foreign transfers, and retail foreign-currency demand, according to Libyan financial disclosures, amid persistent import financing pressure on food, fuel, and industrial inputs.
The central bank sits at the center of this fiscal roundelay. It is the sole legal recipient of hydrocarbon revenues and converts inflows into domestic liquidity for salaries, imports, and foreign exchange allocations, making it the clearing hub for the national economy.
That role has repeatedly placed it at the center of political escalation. Last August, a dispute over central bank leadership triggered a production shutdown in the eastern half of the country that quickly cut output from nearly 959,000 barrels per day to 591,000, according to NOC data. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya warned that disruption of the central bank’s clearing function would freeze LOCs and salary payments, given that hydrocarbons account for more than 90% of export earnings.
The underlying political structure remains split between the UN-backed Government of National Unity in Tripoli and the Government of National Stability based in Benghazi and Tobruk in the east; UN mediation is ongoing, but national elections remain stalled. A rare shift occurred on April 11, however, when the rival eastern and western legislative bodies signed a landmark agreement to unify public spending, creating Libya’s first consolidated budget framework since 2013.
Production recovery continues. Libya is targeting 1.6 million barrels per day by the end of 2026, supported by the rehabilitation of mature fields across the Sirte and Murzuq basins and incremental drilling gains.
In February, Libya awarded oil and gas exploration licenses for the first time in 17 years, granting acreage to Chevron, Eni, QatarEnergy, and Repsol, alongside other global operators competing for the Sirte, Murzuq, and offshore Mediterranean blocks. The round followed broader upstream agreements involving TotalEnergies and ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, and ExxonMobil, signaling renewed international exposure to Libya’s estimated 48.4 billion to 50 billion barrels of proven reserves, the largest in Africa.
Libya’s constraint is now fiscal rather than geological, the analytics firm Geopolitical Desk notes; production has stabilized, but “funding flows remain irregular, procurement cycles constrained, and fiscal authority contested across parallel administrations.”
The result is a landscape where record output, rising revenues, and partial political coordination coexist with fragmented financial execution, ensuring that Libya’s oil recovery is measured in barrels but co…