By Benoît Faucon
Oil guards in Libya are getting ready to take on suspected
Islamic State militants, their commander said Wednesday, following
a third attack on oil fields overnight.
In recent weeks, the North African country's oil industry--once
the lifeblood of its economy--has been in the cross hairs of an
armed conflict.
Colonel Hakim Maazab, who heads the brigade that is in charge of
guarding oil fields in central Libya, told The Wall Street Journal
that the Dahra oil field, about 500 kilometers southeast of
Tripoli, was attacked Tuesday night by suspected Islamic State
militants, hours after two other oil facilities were targeted by
the same group.
Col. Maazab said his brigade had sent reinforcements to the
nearby Zella airport and a military aircraft had arrived to assist
them. "We will go to Dahra today," he said.
A Libyan oil official familiar with the situation in the fields
said the militants were already moving toward a fourth oil
field.
Separately, the oil ministry in Tripoli said on its Facebook
page that airstrikes against ISIS were being planned near central
oil fields.
Mabruk and Bahi, two of the oil fields in central Libya that had
been attacked last month, were stormed again by unknown gunmen
Monday and Tuesday, a spokesman for the National Oil Co. said
Tuesday.
The Mabruk oil field, that once produced 30,000 to 40,000
barrels a day and is operated by a Libyan joint venture with French
oil major Total SA, was occupied again overnight Tuesday by
militants; a group claiming to represent Islamic State killed nine
guards there last month.
The Bahi and Dahra fields are operated by a partnership with
U.S. oil companies Marathon Oil Corp., Hess Corp. and
ConocoPhillips.
Col. Maazab said the gunmen had inflicted heavy damage on the
facilities, destroying oil tanks and the control room at Mabruk.
"Daesh blew up a lot of equipment," he said, using the Arabic
acronym for Islamic State.
Libya, which is home to Africa's largest oil reserves, has been
mired in violence and political divisions since longtime dictator
Moammar Gadhafi was killed in an uprising in 2011. A civil war has
broken out between the internationally recognized government--based
in the country's east--and a rebel faction known as Libya Dawn that
controls the country's capital of Tripoli.
Both sides have recently come under attack from the Libyan
branch of Islamic State, an extremist militant movement that has
overrun parts of Syria and Iraq.
Write to Benoît Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com
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