Libya’s Zawiya Refinery Restarts After Five-Day Sharara Blockade Cost NOC $95 Million

The el-Sharara oil field, Libya's largest, went almost silent last week. An armed group from the Petroleum Facilities Guard closed a valve on the main Sharara-Zawiya pipeline on September 21, cutting production at the 300,000-barrel-a-day field by roughly two-thirds overnight.

Five days later, National Oil Corporation managers at the Zawiya refinery ran out of options. They shut one of the plant's two processing units on September 26 to protect the second, buying time while field teams searched for alternative crude routes through Mellitah and Es Sider. By that point the blockade had consumed 942,000 barrels and left the NOC $95 million poorer.

Zawiya is Libya's largest operating refinery at 120,000 barrels a day. It supplies fuel to two power stations in the capital, which together need roughly 5,200 cubic metres of fuel every day. The unit shutdown raised the prospect of blackouts for residents in the area.

Later that Saturday evening, valve No. 7 was reopened. NOC confirmed regular crude pumping had resumed with precautionary measures in place to stabilise supplies. The Zawiya crude export terminal can load tankers again.

The five-day closure follows a similar standoff in mid-September, when a different PFG faction closed a valve on the Hamada-Zawiya crude pipeline, halting production at the Hamada and Tahara oil fields and prompting a force majeure warning before that standoff was resolved. Both blockades stem from longstanding PFG salary and administrative disputes with the NOC.