BENGHAZI, Libya—Officials of the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, Libya's largest oil producer and the only one based in the country's rebel-controlled eastern territory, said they expect to resume oil shipments later on Sunday when an oil tanker departs from a port in northeastern Libya. It would be the first oil exported from the rebel-held east in over a week.
An oil tanker was expected to depart the port of Tobruk in the northeast corner of Libya sometime Sunday night carrying 700,000 barrels of oil, according to Hassan Bulifa, a member of the company's management committee, which has assumed control of day-to-day operations at the company in the wake of the resignation of the company's unpopular chairman, Abdulwanis Saad, during the uprising against Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Mr. Bulifa said he believed the tanker was bound for China.
The last shipment of oil to depart the eastern territory left last Saturday, Feb. 19, before much of eastern Libya had slipped fully out of government control. Money earned from exports from rebel-controlled territory still goes into the accounts belonging to the National Oil Company, which is based in Tripoli and remains under the control of Mr. Gadhafi's regime.
Still, the relaunching of exports is good news for the company, which has had to drastically cut back production rates due to the lack of export outlets for oil, for fear of running out of storage capacity.
Agoco, which is the largest subsidiary of Libya's National Oil Company, was producing an average of 420,000 barrels per day before the uprising, which began on Feb. 17. Agoco's production accounted for over one-quarter of Libya's total production of 1.6 million barrels per day.
But amid a bloody uprising against Mr. Gadhafi's regime that saw much of eastern Libya fall under the control of pro-democracy rebels, Agoco has reduced production to 40% of that, or about 170,000 barrels per day, just enough to maintain the smooth functioning of the oil wells, according to Yousef Gherryo, Agoco's reservoir manager. Mr. Gherryo said that at the current reduced rate of production, and without a resumption of consistent exports, the company's storage facilities would fill up in mid-March.
The company is also struggling to get its work force back on the job. Mr. Bulifa said that just 50% of the company's 5,700 workers reported to work on Sunday. Nearly all of the company's foreign workers, which make up about 5% of the work force, have been evacuated, including 150 foreign nationals who were evacuated on Saturday after a stealth mission into the Libyan desert by British military commandos.