OMV will Begin Exploration Drilling on Libyan Assets in February 2024
Austrian OMV intends to begin exploratory drilling in Libya in February 2024. Company representatives announced this at a meeting at the headquarters of the National Oil Corporation of Libya (NOC) in Tripoli.
The meeting was attended by the director of the exploration department of NOC, the deputy general director of OMV in Libya and the director of the geological exploration department of OMV and other company representatives. The parties discussed the work completed during 2023, as well as plans for 2024.
The NOC release does not specify which asset OMV plans to begin work on. The Austrian company’s website indicates that it is continuing preparations for exploratory drilling in the Sirte basin, with the drilling of the first well scheduled for 2023.
OMV’s 2022 report said oil production (including condensate) from its Libyan assets was 10.4 million boe. e. “In Libya, production from our assets was severely limited in the first half of the year due to several force majeure circumstances. This delay in production was caused by security outages as a result of political instability in the country. But by mid-July, production there resumed and remained stable until the end year,” the report says.
In Libya, for a long time, there have been two parallel executive bodies: the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, in the west of the country, and the interim cabinet in the east of the country, which was supported by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA).
Oil production in Libya before the military crisis was about 1.1-1.2 million bpd, and at the beginning of 2020 it fell below 100 thousand bpd. In 2022, according to OPEC, production amounted to 981 thousand b/d, and from the fourth quarter of 2022 – 1.1 million b/d.
