Late on 20 February, members of the Petroleum Facilities guard (PFG) published a video statement read outside the Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex in western Libya calling for their demands around salaries and benefits to be met and warning they would shut down Mellitah Complex, Zawiyya Refinery and Misrata Complex in five days if they were not.
On 25 February, the deadline given by the PFG protestors for their demands to be met, PFG members entered Mellitah and Zawiyya, preventing staff from accessing the sites. They reiterated their calls for their financial demands to be met, stressing that the initial ten-day deadline had passed, and threatened to close all oil facilities in the western region. Video footage also showed PFG members apparently shutting the valve on a feeder pipeline into Mellitah. At the same time, the PFG Nalut Branch turned off the valve on the pipelines feeding oil and gas to the Mellitah Complex and the Greenstream pipeline to Italy. Operations at these facilities were temporarily halted.
This jumpstarted efforts by the NOC and Government of National Unity (GNU) to meet the PFG’s demands. Later the same day, PM Dabaiba issued No. (78) for 2024, determining the salaries of PFG members according to the unified salary table for members of the Libyan Army. The PFG welcomed this decision and by the close of 25 February had ended the brief blockades on the western oil facilities. On 26 February, the NOC confirmed that its ‘operations are proceeding as usual across all offshore and onshore locations.’