Oil output was halted at several Libyan oil fields on Tuesday after eastern Libya's rival government on Monday announced a halt to all oil output and exports from OPEC's African producer.
Crude oil production from the El Feel oil field in southwestern Libya has stopped, engineers told Reuters on Tuesday.
Engineers at several other oil fields in the east and southeast have also halted or reduced production. Local operators have indicated to Bloomberg that they will gradually shut down production across the country.
Libya, which produces about 1.2 million barrels of oil a day, was plunged into a deep political crisis earlier this month by a dispute over the leadership of the Libyan Central Bank, the only internationally recognised repository of Libya's oil revenues.
The Benghazi-based government in eastern Libya, a rival to the Tripoli-based government of the politically divided North African OPEC producer, said on Monday it would stop all crude oil production and exports.
The east-based government backed by military leader Khalifa Haftar is not internationally recognised, but Haftar and his men control most of the country's oil fields.
The situation in Libya has deteriorated over the past few weeks, and East-West rivalry has flared up again, at the centre of which is the leadership of the Libyan Central Bank – the custodian of Libya's wealth and oil export revenues.
In the west, the internationally recognised government in the capital Tripoli is seeking to replace Libya's Central Bank Governor Sadiq al-Kabir, sparking the latest rift between eastern and western governments and political factions that has again raised the risk of a collapse in Libya's oil production and exports.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Monday expressed its “deep concern at the deteriorating situation in Libya as a result of unilateral decisions.”
UNSMIL warned that “continuing to take unilateral action would impose a heavy price on the Libyan people for not resolving the long-term crisis, and would increase the risk of financial and economic collapse of the country.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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