National Oil Corporation recently issued the following announcement.

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and prayers and peace be upon the Messenger of God.

I congratulate all those working in the oil sector in their various productive sites onshore and offshore, in the east and west across all of Libya, as well as the Libyan nation and the Arab and Islamic nation regarding the occasion of Eid Al Fitr

We ask God almighty for a Happy New Year and a Happy Eid and that it will be the closure of sorrows, especially the oil sector as it experienced a severe obstruction that never occurred before since the beginning of the production in 1961, Which hindered the government required budgets due to income insufficiency, and oil, as We know, it constitutes about 95% of the general budget, and stopping the oil means that there is no other source of income, and therefore the budget became extremely limited.

In fact, we have a major dilemma in the oil sector, last April, the income was approximately $ 50 million, compared to almost "two billion or a bit less " in April 2019, so the difference is obvious, and the income at its current level does not count for anything, it doesn’t even reach up to a third of the monthly budget of the NOC itself, let alone the other required expenses, the salaries, the operating expenses and confronting Covid19 pandemic.

Once again, I implore those who have obstructed the production to fear God, especially in these blessed days and to stop the closure and let the 'NOC' restart the production, moreover, the consequences of the closure are not salient in the time being, yet they will be as the war stops and reproduction is once again enabled.

The consequences will reach a dangerous level as the existing savings are depleted and sales opportunities are lost forever, worth mentioned, savings are getting depleted daily and this is a real issue, so we implore once again the responsible group to fear God.

Actually. The NOC is suffering already from technical issues every day such as leaks, and now some working-programs have stopped in the Wells, also the drillings, increasing production and increasing reserves, everything is halted due to this closure, the state of force majeure and the new Coronavirus causes serious issues, and again I call on those responsible for the closure to stop this and be aware that this is a serious dilemma, and this is not only a violation of the law but in contrary to the sharia-law and in contrary to costumes and everything.

In fact, looking at the status of Libya and the depletion of its savings makes it clear that the country is running out on finance soon. Libya, is a great country with all its capabilities and its respectable country that lives respectfully among all nations and also its respected and generous people and its small-in-size population with its huge resources, so it is unreasonable for Libya to take subsidies from international banks such as " Rice and flour " with having immense recourses of oil production that is disrupted by a group of people that don’t represent the Libyan people at all, and those who disrupted production by force claiming that they represent tribes and these tribes asked for no representation regarding the closure, so this group represent only themselves as these tribe never committed such actions before and will not do so now. I personally, communicated with some of the tribal compositions and they declared no such affiliation to this group regarding the closure.

Also, we have a problem in the south as we were unable to tackle due to security problems, the south did not obtain the required fuel or even propane gas for a year now or about 15 months, forcing people to return to the Stone Age and collect firewood for cooking for their children which is a real tragedy due to the security situation But, praise is to God, "Brega for the marketing of oil" company under the supervision of the National Oil Corporation has contacted the mayors of various municipalities in the south in order to deliver supplies. With the help of God, we hope that we succeed and that these supplies reach the south in the next few days.

Once again, I recall that these blessed days of Eid are days were people reconcile and harmonize, therefore, I hope these fighting factions stop the war which will stabilize the country.

We ask God to bring the Libyans to reconciliation.

May the Peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.

The Chairman: Engineer Mustafa Sanalla

Original source: https://noc.ly/index.php/en/new-4/5937-the-chairman-of-the-national-oil-corporation,-engineer-mustafa-sanalla-speech-on-the-occasion-of-eid-al-fitr