#Libya will face 'catastrophe' if oil blockade continues: Tripoli premier - Reuters

Libya will face 'catastrophe' if oil blockade continues: Tripoli premier - Reuters:

Libya will face a “catastrophic situation” unless foreign powers put pressure on eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar to lift a blockade of oilfields that has cut output to almost zero, the country’s internationally recognized premier said on Monday.

Since Friday, Haftar’s forces have closed Libya’s major oil ports in a power play as European and Arab powers and the United States were meeting with his supporters in Berlin to push him to halt a campaign to capture the capital Tripoli.

Tripoli-based Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj told Reuters he rejects eastern demands to link a reopening of oil ports to a new distribution of oil revenues among Libyans, saying such income was in any case meant to benefit the entire country. 


“The situation will be catastrophic should it stay like this,” Serraj said in an interview in Berlin.