As HoR Continues its Work, Arab League Shuns Call for Foreign Intervention

As speculations abound over the airstrike of Monday in Tripoli, the House of Representatives has re-gathered in Tobruk to address the issues of forming a new caretaker government and discussing the position of Army’s Chief of Staff Obeidi. At the same time, the HoR had to register critiques coming from Arab League officials with regards to its request for foreign intervention, these remarks will hardly help the HoR achieving a much-needed breakthrough in its bid for gathering external help from Western and NATO countries who had previously intervened in 2011.

Nonetheless, with regards to this, it is worth reporting a passage from an article published for Al-Monitor by Mustafa Fetouri  who highlighted the crucial dimension that any solution to the current Libyan crisis must have:

Whether the call for intervention finds any response or not, and whether it actually does happen, is another matter. What is certain, though, is that the complex Libyan situation will remain a largely internal issue requiring Libyans to come to their senses and sit together to claim back their country.

Unfortunately, if media and PR wars are an indication of where national dialogue is headed, signs are not encouraging but rather point towards heightened social tension. Tuesday, a Libyan official confirmed that the government had requested from NileSat to shut down the broadcasting of Islamist leaning and HoR-opposing “Libya al-Wataniya” and “Libya al-Ramia” channels. Furthermore, on Wednesday, unconfirmed rumors of Sudanese pro-Ansar al-Shari’a mercenaries gathering in Kufra emerged, evoking a narrative reminiscent of rumors regarding dark-skinned mercenaries flocking to Qadhafi’s side in early 2011.

On the other hand, despite dire political and security developments, Libya’s oil sector continues to slowly boost its production levels. In particular, yesterday a tanker loaded oil in Libya’s port of Es-Sider for the first time in a year. Es-Sider has a loading capacity of 340.000 barrels per day which will add to current production levels that have been consistently hitting the 500.000bpd mark during the month of July. Furthermore, ENI has just spudded a new exploration offshore well. Unfortunately for Libya, however, its oil production is back on a sluggish market that registered not only a drop in the current price for crude oil, but also a negative revision of the expected growth in general oil demand for this year. Market difficulties reflect particularly heavily on Libya's ability to sell its crude since most of its oil exports are directed towards the Eurozone area, and Italy in particular, whose economies are still marred by the crippling effects of the financial crisis.