Libya starts trial run of long-delayed gas pipeline

Libya has moved to revive one of its long-delayed gas infrastructure projects after beginning a trial run of a pipeline designed to recover large volumes of gas that were previously being flared, as reported by Reuters on April 14th.

At the centre of the project is a new 42-inch pipeline linking the Intisar A/103 field to the Brega gas distribution network over roughly 130 kilometres.

Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said the line would allow the recovery of around 150 million cubic feet of gas per day that had previously been burned off through flaring. That would increase supplies for domestic consumers while also freeing additional volumes for export, making the project important not only for efficiency but for Libya’s wider gas strategy.

The pipeline project had been stalled for around 16 years, and that it is expected to relieve “back pressure” that had disrupted operations and forced some fields to shut down. In practical terms, this makes the trial run more than a technical milestone as it represent a new attempt to avoid bottlenecks from a gas network that has long struggled to convert big reserves into a stable output.

The timing also fits a broader push by the NOC to project momentum in Libya’s hydrocarbons sector as NOC has recently announced new oil and gas discoveries in collaboration with Italian authorities and awarded exploration blocks in its first licensing round since 2007, while aiming to raise production to 1 billion standard cubic feet per day and increase exports to Europe by the early 2030s.

Libya is sitting on an estimated 80 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, but exports through the Greenstream pipeline to Italy remain limited. The new pipeline is therefore part of a wider attempt to show that Libya’s gas sector is not only resource rich, but increasingly capable of moving beyond delay and underuse.

Reuters, Maghrebi.org