• Pipeline resumes crude flows after May 24 leak halted supply.
• Repairs highlight Libya’s urgent need to modernize 1960s-era pipelines.
• NOC estimates $17 billion needed to boost production to 2 million b/d.

The pipeline linking Libya’s Hamada oil fields to the Zawiya refinery has resumed operations after more than two months of repairs following a leak on May 24 that forced an immediate halt to crude flows.

The state oil operator Arabian Gulf Oil Company (AGOCO), a subsidiary of the National Oil Corporation (NOC), announced on Thursday, July 3, that it had completed repairs to the pipeline.

The leak had suspended crude shipments to the Zawiya refinery, Libya’s largest, which has a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day (b/d) and is vital for domestic liquid fuel supplies.

To fix the problem, teams closed a valve to isolate the damaged section, released pressure through bypass valves, and diverted crude to the Tahara field to secure the network.

The NOC did not disclose the amount of crude lost or the precise operational impact, but the incident led to a temporary halt in pumping at the Hamada field.

While officials described this as an isolated case, it adds to a pattern of similar leaks in Libya’s aging pipeline network. In January 2021, a leak on a pipeline from the Samah fields to Zawiya stopped production of 200,000 b/d. In June 2021, simultaneous leaks on lines from the Sarir and Messla fields to the Hariga terminal cut exports by nearly 290,000 b/d.

The NOC has long warned that pipelines installed in the 1960s are at the end of their lifespan and urgently need replacement, with chairman Farhat Bengdara saying in late 2023 that maintaining these pipelines is critical to boosting national production and that they have reached their maximum lifespan and must be replaced. He estimated that raising output to 2 million b/d within three to five years would require about $17 billion in investments.

This article was initially pulished in French by Abdel-Latif Boureima

Edited in English by Ange Jason Quenum