CAIRO, December 22. /TASS/. Libya does not rule out its withdrawal from the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), head of the Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) Mustafa Sanalla told Afrigatenews portal on the sidelines of the organization’s meeting in Cairo.
His delegation opposed the decision of other members of the organization to renew the authority of Kuwait’s Abbas Ali Al-Naki as Secretary General of OAPEC for another three year term for the fourth time.
The Libyans insisted that the organization should consider their candidate to this post and when that candidate was rejected, Sanalla refused to continue to participate in consultations, and left the meeting.
He later accused the colleagues from the Arabian monarchies of lobbying their interests.
"The Arabian lobby against our candidate is evident, despite the fact that we submitted his candidacy six months ago. Now, we do not see any other explanation but the fact that the Libyan candidate that has an international reputation in the oil industry, was ignored."
Before the war broke out in Libya three years ago, the country was the 12th largest oil exporter in the world. In 2011, when the "February 17 Revolution" began, Libya was producing 1.6 million barrels per day. When the military conflict began, many foreign energy companies were forced to temporarily scale down all operations and continuing confrontation caused considerable damage to oil infrastructure facilities. According to rough estimates, just in three years the oil sector losses reached $100 billion.
In mid-November Sanalla said that his country looked forward to the next year to increase oil production by almost half - to 600,000 barrels per day to 1.1 million barrels.
OAPEC was established oil-producing countries in 1968 to stabilize oil prices. It includes 11 countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and the UAE.