The United States returns to doing business in Libya. Indeed, the North African country is now seen by Washington as a viable environment for US companies to operate with reasonable security and invest in a more predictable way than it was a few months ago. On March 26, the American multinationals Halliburton e Honeywell have therefore concluded two agreements for the development, respectively, of a oil field in central Libya, and the construction of a oil refinery in the southwest, near areas where i Russian mercenaries from the Wagner company. This fact was interpreted by experts as a desire of the United States to strengthen its economic influence in the southern Mediterranean to compensate for Russian oil exports to Europe. Indeed, Washington does not want to leave the North African oil sector at the mercy of Moscow, especially in light of the outbreak of the civil war in Sudanwhere the Wagner group and the commander of the Libyan National Army Khalifa Haftaraccording to rumors by experts and the media, are allies in support of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces.
The “energy war” between the US and Russia
According to what is reported by the Wall Street Journalthe American oil companies Halliburton and Honeywell have concluded deals for a total of $1.4 billion with the Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC). Halliburton will develop the Al-Zahr oil field in Sirte governorate, worth $1 billion, while Honeywell will build an oil refinery in the southwest worth $1 billion. 400 million dollars. Al-Zahr is the first oil field in commercial quantities discovered by al-Waha Company, a subsidiary of NOC, in the late 1950s. The ore was though sabotaged by ISIS in 2015, when the latter controlled the governorate of Sirte and the adjacent areas, and its current conditions therefore do not leave Libya ample room to impose its conditions on foreign companies, especially American ones, many of which had withdrawn from North African markets to concentrate on the extraction of so-called “shale oil” in North America. The Honeywall project instead envisages the production of approx 30,000 barrels a day of crude oil that will be refined to produce cooking gas, jet fuel and other products, as well as 1.4 million liters of gasoline and 1.1 million liters of diesel per day. The oil refinery would therefore solve the fuel crisis in southern Libya, inhabited by Tuareg tribes and under the control of the eastern forces led by Khalifa Haftar and where Wagner has strong influence, with intricate alliances with Chadian rebel groups. The NOC also entered into a contract with Kearney, one of the largest US multinational strategic consultancy companies, to implement the North African company’s plan to restore Libya to the ranks of the world‘s leading energy-producing countries.
The War of the Barrels
Washington’s main objective, however, is also that of limiting as much as possible theRussian interference in Libya, and in the entire area of North Africa in general, and this explains the investments in areas where Moscow has exerted a strong influence since 2015. The United States is in fact trying to push the oil and gas producing countries (and therefore Libya) to increase their production and exports to the European continent to compensate for shortages of fuel supplies after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. The availability of oil demand in the European market has encouraged American companies to take risks by investing in Libya’s oil sector, which is experiencing relative stability, especially after the appointment of Farhat Bengdara as head of the NOC. Last March, the director of the North Africa Office of the US State Department indeed received Bengdara in Washington to strengthen the collaboration between the NOC and the US aimed at implementing a strategy to strengthen capacities and increase production of Tripoli oil and gas. However, the United States is strongly demanding the removal, especially of the warlord Khalifa Haftar, from Russia and the Wagner group. On April 27, Barbara Leaf, the US Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, had a telephone conversation with General Haftar in which she stressed “the urgent need to prevent external actors, including the Kremlin-backed Russian Wagner group , to further destabilize Libya or its neighbors, including Sudan”.