Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) is confident the country could raise oil production to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) by early next decade from about 1.4 million bpd now, NOC chairman Masoud Suleman told Bloomberg in an interview published on Friday.
A 2026 unified budget for Libya, brokered with the help of the United States, gives the NOC a “lifeline” of more than $2 billion (13 billion Libyan dinars) as an operating budget, the official told Bloomberg.
The national oil company did not receive any funding in the 2025 budget.
“The era of delayed funding, which used to cause problems and concerns, both for us and our partners, is now behind us,” Suleman told Bloomberg in an interview in Tripoli.
The budget plans and the payments make NOC more confident in attracting investments in the country’s oil and gas sector.
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These have recently increased as many international oil and gas companies returned to Libya and resumed operations and partnerships.
Just last month, NOC and Austrian energy firm OMV declared the Essar oil discovery commercially viable as OPEC’s second-largest African producer pushes to revive its industry in partnerships with the oil majors.
Following years of civil war and turmoil, Libya and its national oil company have launched a campaign to bring Big Oil firms back to the country’s upstream with the first oil tenders in nearly two decades.
Last year, Libya launched its first bid round for oil and gas exploration in 18 years.
The previous such bid round was held in 2007, four years before the toppling of Muammar Ghaddafi in 2011, which led to a protracted civil war in the country with various factions and tribal interests vying for control of key institutions and major oilfields.
NOC earlier this year formally signed exploration and production-sharing agreements from its 2025 bid round with international companies including Repsol, Turkish Petroleum, Eni, QatarEnergy, and MOL, marking the country’s first major licensing push in 17 years.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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