a écrit le 3 septembre 2011 à 18h40 But won't the NTC want to reorganise its oil industry differently, and perhaps do without the west completely? Gaddafi originally kicked out western oil but then invited it back in after UN sanctions over the Lockerbie bombing were lifted. The problem for the NTC is that oil provides virtually all of the country's income. Even if nationalisation was their preferred option, getting production back up and running as quickly as possible is the imperative. Libya used to produce 1.6m barrels of oil a day – worth an almighty $1.3bn a week at today's crude prices, and money the NTC desperately needs, even if it means sharing the spoils.
Whatever deal is reached, it is unlikely to be all or nothing: nationalisation or capitulation. What the new government will certainly want to do is exact much tougher terms for western oil company involvement. The idea that a third of Libya's oil would be simply turned over to the French, as the Libération story suggested, is surely nonsense. It would be political suicide for the NTC.
What happened in Iraq is instructive. Although BP and others have been given access to reserves in Iraq, they are not on the terms they would ideally have chosen. The auctions there have resulted in "technical service agreements", where the likes of BP act as contractors and get $2 on each barrel of oil produced but do not "own" the reserves in the way they do in the North Sea – or did in Iraq before they were removed by Saddam Hussein.
Western independent oil companies have the most modern technology, easy access to capital market money and a can-do spirit, but they are also on the defensive because they are being gradually muscled out globally by state-owned national oil companies in places such as Venezuela, Brazil and Russia.
The desperate – and now failed – recent attempt by BP to tie up a share-swap deal with Russian state-owned Rosneft, despite all the problems it has had in that country, was just another sign of this.
With the North Sea and other mature basins fast running out of oil and a failure to fully invest in lower carbon alternatives, western ministers are also desperately worried about future crude supplies.
It was a war around oil in Libya – but the new interim government in Tripoli could yet win that, too.
Whatever deal is reached, it is unlikely to be all or nothing: nationalisation or capitulation. What the new government will certainly want to do is exact much tougher terms for western oil company involvement. The idea that a third of Libya's oil would be simply turned over to the French, as the Libération story suggested, is surely nonsense. It would be political suicide for the NTC.
What happened in Iraq is instructive. Although BP and others have been given access to reserves in Iraq, they are not on the terms they would ideally have chosen. The auctions there have resulted in "technical service agreements", where the likes of BP act as contractors and get $2 on each barrel of oil produced but do not "own" the reserves in the way they do in the North Sea – or did in Iraq before they were removed by Saddam Hussein.
Western independent oil companies have the most modern technology, easy access to capital market money and a can-do spirit, but they are also on the defensive because they are being gradually muscled out globally by state-owned national oil companies in places such as Venezuela, Brazil and Russia.
The desperate – and now failed – recent attempt by BP to tie up a share-swap deal with Russian state-owned Rosneft, despite all the problems it has had in that country, was just another sign of this.
With the North Sea and other mature basins fast running out of oil and a failure to fully invest in lower carbon alternatives, western ministers are also desperately worried about future crude supplies.
It was a war around oil in Libya – but the new interim government in Tripoli could yet win that, too.
