Production at Sharara oilfield in south Libya disrupted over abduction of engineers

Production at Libya’s giant Sharara oil field is said to fall by at least 160,000 barrels per day (bpd) on Saturday after two staff were abducted in an attack by an unknown armed group, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) said.

The attack happened at a control station on the outskirts of Sharara, about 40 km (25 miles) from the main part of the field, engineers at the field said.

“One of the abducted workers was Romanian,” they said.

NOC said it expected output to drop by 160,000 barrels per day (bpd), although one engineer said output at the field, which had been producing 200,000-300,000 bpd recently, had already dropped to below 100,000 bpd.

Tripoli-based NOC operates Sharara in partnership with Repsol, Total, OMV and Equinor, formerly known as Statoil.