In a statement published by Bloomberg, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the NOC, Mustafa Sanalla, said that the National Oil Corporation (NOC) continues to scale up its daily oil production index until it achieves its planned OPEC share of 1.6 million barrels per day in two years, and to 2.1 million within four years.
He also explained that the NOC plans to start production from new oil fields in the coming months, in the central Sirte basin and the Ghadams basin in the west. It is also working to restart fields that were shut down by ISIS attacks in 2015.
The statements by the NOC chairman falls in line with the recent announcement made by the new Minister of Gas and Oil that the country’s oil sector is back on track with Libya’s oil sector set to receive the largest portion of the developmental spending budget in the form of 1.6 billion dollars.
The NOC has stated for years now that the lack of funding by previous governments has negatively affected its growth as well as the country’s income with the company unable to keep up with repairs, demand and damages sustained to oil facilities during the civil conflicts due to a stark lack of sufficient funding.
Libya is home to Africa’s largest oil reserves and an uneven portion of the country’s economy heavily relies on the success of its oil sector, as it remains to be the country’s primary source of income.