Libya has awarded oil and gas exploration blocks to foreign energy companies including Chevron, Eni, QatarEnergy and Repsol in its first licensing round in nearly two decades, as it pushes to revive a hydrocarbons sector crippled by years of conflict and underinvestment.
State-owned National Oil Corporation on Wednesday named winners of its first bidding round since 2007, allocating concessions across the onshore Sirte and Murzuq basins as well as offshore gasfields in the Mediterranean.
Italy’s Eni and QatarEnergy secured Offshore Area 01 in the gas-rich Cyrenaica zone, deepening a Mediterranean partnership that has expanded steadily in recent years.
A separate consortium of Spain’s Repsol, Hungary’s MOL and Turkey’s state-owned TPOC won Offshore Area 07.
US major Chevron took the Sirte S4 exploration licence, a notable return to Libya’s most prolific oil basin, while Nigeria’s Aiteo was awarded the Murzuq M1 block in a rare entry by an African independent.
Libya signed a 25-year oil development agreement worth more than $20 billion with France’s TotalEnergies and US's ConocoPhillips last month.
International energy companies have been looking to return to Libya, which has Africa’s largest proven crude reserves. The country produces some of North Africa’s cheapest, largely sweet oil, much of which has remained offline since the 2011 civil war that followed the overthrow of former leader Muammar Qaddafi.
Production has rebounded to about 1.4 million barrels a day, its highest level in more than a decade. Tripoli is targeting a crude output of 1.6 million bpd by the end of 2026.
Libyan crude is increasingly important to Europe as it looks to diversify its energy supplies away from Russia, following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The country also plans to increase gas production to nearly 1 billion standard cubic feet a day over the next five years and have supply available for export to Europe by 2030.
Despite the oil rebound, the country continues to grapple with fragmented governance, heavy public spending and weak fiscal co-ordination between rival administrations.
