Tripoli halts all energy cooperation with Italy: PM

TRIPOLI: Libya's premier announced a "total halt" on Thursday to cooperation with Italy, saying no future deals would be signed with energy group ENI because of Italy's participation in a NATO bombing campaign. "ENI is finished and that is for good," Baghdadi Mahmudi told journalists, accusing Italy of having "violated" a non-aggression pact with Libya signed three years ago.

"We will no longer work with ENI and Italy will have no future petrol contracts in Libya," Mahmudi said, estimating that ENI had invested around $30 billion (21 billion euros) in the Libyan petroleum sector. However, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, quoted by the country's ANSA news agency, brushed off the comments. "We are the ones who do not want and cannot have contracts" (with Tripoli). They are embargoed," Frattini was reported to have told journalists during a visit to Croatia. In Milan, an ENI spokesman declined to comment.

Mahmudi said that, "under the agreement signed and adopted by the parliaments of the two countries, Italy agreed not to attack Libya. "Unfortunately, since the start of the aggression, Italian warplanes have been killing our children, destroying our houses and our country's infrastructure," he added. However, the premier did not write off ties with France and the United States. He said Tripoli was reaching out to these two countries and still "ready" to negotiate oil contracts with them because they "are beginning to reconsider their position on Atlantic aggression" against Libya. "If they take a step in our direction, we will follow suit," Mahmudi said.

He said his country, shaken for five months by rebellion and under international sanctions, would renegotiate oil contracts with priority going to Russia, China and Latin America. Russia abstained from the UN Security Council vote on the resolution that opened the way for international intervention in Libya, and Moscow has since remained critical of the objectives and scope of NATO's air strikes.

China has held its line of non-interference in the conflict, although several rounds of contacts have also taken place between Chinese officials and representatives of the Libyan opposition. Prior to the conflict, Libya, which is a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, had been exporting 1.49 million barrels of oil per day, 85 percent of which was sold to Europe. Various foreign companies, including ENI and Norway's Statoil, had been extracting Libya's oil deposits. However, combat around the Gulf of Sirte, in which most of Libya's oil terminals are situated, has caused oil output to grind to a halt, causing International Energy Agency members to tap into their strategic reserves to head off the threat of shortages at the start of summer in the northern hemisphere.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011