Libya\’s oil sector has been crippled by prolonged strikes at key loading ports since the end of July, removing more than 1 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of crude oil from the global market. These supply disruptions have affected the Brent crude oil price, a global benchmark, as the outages reinforced a tighter market by increasing global supply disruptions and decreasing surplus crude oil production capacity. Global markets adjusted after the initial shock in August, as supplies of crude oil from other countries made up the difference. However, there are several other factors that have more recently influenced the Brent price, some of which are discussed below.

Overview. During July and August, strikes led by the Petroleum Facilities Guard at major oil loading ports in the eastern half of Libya forced the complete or partial shut-in of oil fields linked to those ports. The unrest spread to the western half of the country at the end of August when a different group, the Zintan militia, blocked pipelines transporting crude oil from two of the largest fields in the west (El Sharara and El Feel), forcing the shutdown of those fields. The fields restarted production in mid-September, but the largest one, El Sharara, was shut down again in late October because of demonstrations by the Tuareg community. El Feel\’s production was also cut in November after protests by Berber activists at the Mellitah port blocked crude oil exports and storage tanks were near full. El Feel\’s production is expected to ramp up to normal levels because the blockade at Mellitah ended.

via Libyan crude oil production levels influence international crude oil markets – Today in Energy – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).