CAIRO: Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corp (NOC) announced on Monday the opening of a new oilfield named Tahara and said it should eventually produce 14,000 barrels of oil and 6 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

The field is being operated by Arabian Gulf Oil Co (AGOCO), a subsidiary of the NOC, in the Hamada area of western Libya.

In a statement, AGOCO said the field might be able to produce higher output of 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) with additional wells.

NOC said its chairman, Mustafa Sanalla, gave the green light for the field to start production.

Libya is exempt from production limits agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies (OPEC+) as the country struggles to recover from years of instability.

Early this month, the NOC said port closures had reduced Libya’s output by 100,000 bpd and the country’s total production was 1.1 million bpd.

Last month, Sanalla told a news conference in Tripoli the country aimed to keep oil output at 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2022.

He said at the time Libya planned to bring two new fields onstream this year, adding nearly 18,000 bpd of capacity. It was not immediately clear whether Tahara was one of those fields.