On the evening of 3 August, protesters entered the operation room at Sharara oil field in southwest Libya and instructed staff to reduce production. In the hours after the protest began, production began to drop gradually. Pre-shut down production was around 270,000bpd.
On 4 August, the Government of National Unity (GNU) condemned the attempt to close Sharara as ‘new attempts at political blackmail’. It vowed to defend Libya’s people and a field it described as a precious economic resource.
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) did not initially comment on the disruption. However at midday on 6 August, the NOC announced ‘the start of a partial reduction in production from the Sharara field due to force majeure conditions resulting from the sit-ins of the Fezzan Movement Coalition. The NOC calls on the concerned parties to take into account the national interest and support the NOC’s efforts aimed at stabilizing and increasing production.
Despite official claims that the Fezzan Anger movement is behind the protests, Bashir al-Sheikh, the leader of Fezzan Anger, said his movement had nothing to do with the closure and that Saddam Haftar, the son of Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Khalifa Haftar, had issued the order. Neither Saddam nor the LNA leadership have commented on the shut down at the time of writing.