Libya Ships First-Ever Cargo From Long-Stalled Chadar Oil Field

Libyan company Zallaf Oil and Gas has shipped the first export cargo from the Chadar oil field, at 600,000 barrels.

Production at the field started in January this year from five wells, Reuters reported, citing the company, which is a subsidiary of the National Oil Corporation. When production started, it ran at rates of 1,500 barrels of crude daily plus 7.5 million cubic feet of associated gas, Zallaf said in January.

The Chadar field is located in the prolific Sirte Basin and was discovered way back in 1968 by Mobil. The national Oil Corporation set up Zallaf in 2017 specifically to develop oil fields that had been discovered but had not moved on to production.

The news about the export cargo comes days after another subsidiary of the national Oil Corporation announced a new discovery in the northwestern part of Libya. The discovery was made in well H1-NC4, with daily production estimated at about 4,675 barrels per day of crude oil, and approximately 2 million cubic feet of gas, NOC said last week.

A week earlier, the NOC announced another discovery, in the Sirte Basin, made by the local subsidiary of Austria’s OMV. Production tests showed that the exploration well is producing more than 4,200 barrels of oil per day, with gas production expected to exceed 2.6 million cubic feet daily, the Libyan state oil and gas company said.

The Austrian energy major resumed its operations in Libya at the end of 2024 as Big Oil majors also began to return to the country, signaling an improving security environment after over a decade of civil war. BP, Shell, Eni, and TotalEnergies, as well as Exxon and Chevron, all went back to Libya, with some of them resuming work at already existing fields and others lining up to bid on new exploration projects after the NOC launched its first oil and gas tender in 18 years.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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