u/Ali_Sulimanlib

So on September 21 some armed guys shut Valve No. 7 on the pipeline that takes crude from Sharara (Libya's biggest field) up to the Zawiya refinery. And some of them were from the Petroleum Facilities Guard, the people who get paid to protect this stuff. Reuters says the fight was over the Guard's status and funding.

Sharara does around 300-320k barrels a day and output dropped by about 200k. NOC said the valve was back open on September 26. Their count is 942,376 barrels lost, roughly $95 million. A unit at Zawiya also had to shut because it ran out of crude, and Zawiya (about 120k barrels a day) mostly makes fuel for Libyans. So people feel it at the pump before anyone abroad notices.

Now the funny part is the timing. On August 30 the Tripoli government, Haftar's side, the House and the High State Council all signed a UN-backed deal on election rules. Boulos said on September 29 it was a step forward and now it's about actually doing it. There's also a reported US plan that nobody's signed. Dbeibah keeps the executive, Saddam Haftar heads a new presidential body for about three years. Italian press said late September it was losing steam. Take that one as reporting, not fact.

My take: the paper isn't the hard part. If the armed groups stay exactly where they are, they keep the trick they already use. Want your funding recognized? Close a pipe. Meanwhile diplomats are out there saying "unity." NOC has been saying for years that the field is used as a bargaining chip.

And ConocoPhillips and Chevron signed agreements in 2026, with the pitch that output goes up once things calm down. Hard to plan around a country that can't keep one valve open for a week though.

Until whoever controls Sharara answers to one command that doesn't get paid by shutting pipelines, I'd expect talks and shutdowns to keep showing up in the same month. Feels like two stories but it's really one, and the second tells you how the first gets priced.

This Turkish-Libyan joint venture is building a direct reduced iron plant near Benghazi. The guy running it, Ahmed Gadalla, told Reuters they’re expecting roughly $2.5 billion in total investment and are aiming for commercial production in early 2028.

Capacity is planned at 8.1 million tonnes a year once everything is up, with the first phase at 2.7 million. They’re going the natural gas route instead of coal, which cuts the carbon footprint. About 90% is supposed to be exported, the rest turned into rebar and pipes for the local market. Gas for the first phase is already sorted and they’re putting up their own power station.

The location is kind of perfect right now. Europe’s carbon border tax is live and getting wider, so cleaner iron is becoming more valuable there. Meanwhile the US still has those heavy Trump-era steel tariffs in place, which makes shipping into America a lot less attractive. Add in the ongoing headaches with shipping through the Gulf because of the Iran situation, and a Mediterranean plant starts looking like a useful alternative for European buyers.

Gadalla apparently sees Europe’s climate rules as a real commercial opening. Whether the whole thing actually delivers will depend on construction staying on track and Libya not sliding back into chaos, but the setup looks better than most similar announcements floating around.

Anyone here follow the steel market or North Africa closely? Does this one feel more serious than the usual big-project hype?

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/major-eastern-libya-industrial-project-seen-drawing-25-billion-investment-2026-09-10/

I've been playing around with video editing and AI on my Youtube channel. What do you guys think?

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Gadhafi has apparently become a brand for Libya's drug trade.

Libyan authorities say they seized around 100,000 ecstasy pills shaped like Muammar Gadhafi's head and shoulders, smuggled into the country from Europe.

According to the report, the shipment came through a European country and entered Libya by sea. Authorities intercepted it after receiving intelligence about the shipment. Would a European country try to start something in Libya?

Since 2011, Libya has struggled with fragmented political authority, competing security structures, weak border control and divided institutions. Those conditions create opportunities for smuggling networks. Not just drugs, but fuel, weapons, migrants and other illicit goods.

His regime disappeared, but the political and institutional vacuum that followed created an environment where completely different networks could flourish.

Pretty ironic how Gadhafi spent decades building one of the most recognizable political images in the Arab world to have ecstasy shaped as him.

Makes you wonder who actually benefits from Libya staying this fragmented. A weak, porous Libya isn't just useful for drug traffickers.

https://preview.redd.it/kzzgi3c7qfph1.png?width=1800&format=png&auto=webp&s=cd162fcedbcd9a84dd431e9b63871fbb52410c8c

Americans traveling to Libya are told to leave a DNA sample first.

That's not a metaphor. That's the actual U.S. State Department guidance. Highest level travel advisory. Kidnapping, terrorism, landmines, no functioning state to call if something goes wrong.

Here's the part that gets skipped.

Libya isn't poor. It has oil, a small population, a Mediterranean coastline, and more raw potential per capita than most of its neighbors. This isn't a resource problem. It's a state capacity problem.

And that raises a question worth sitting with.

In 2011, international intervention helped remove the old regime. What came after was never fully built. Fourteen years later, the U.S. government's own travel advisory reads like a status report on that gap.

So what actually explains it?

Is this mainly a story about outside powers losing interest once the hard, unglamorous work of state building stopped being urgent? Or is it mainly a story about Libyan factions choosing fragmentation and competing power centers over the compromises unity would require?

My honest read: both forces fed each other. International attention moves in cycles, it spikes during a crisis and fades once the cameras leave, and that made it easier for local actors to keep postponing the harder political settlement. Neither dynamic excuses the other. They reinforced each other.

The oil is still there. The location is still there. The population is still small enough that this shouldn't be an unsolvable problem.

What's missing is sustained follow-through, from Libyans and from the outside world, treating state building as a priority instead of an afterthought once the crisis stage passes.

That's the actual headline. Not the DNA samples.

https://preview.redd.it/cleji4y0runh1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=782cb364effea4a735a3e33dc4acc3287d13a13f

What do you think most people get wrong about Libyans?

Libya doesn't grow most of what it eats. It relies on food coming in from other countries, and that only works smoothly when nothing disrupts it. A war, a blocked shipping route, a sudden price spike, any of those can throw the whole system off fast, and there's not much a country can do about it once it's that dependent.

We usually think of oil as the resource that makes countries vulnerable to the rest of the world. But if food security can unravel this easily, it might be an even bigger risk going forward.

If your country couldn't grow enough food on its own, would you trust that imports would always show up on time?

https://www.ibtimes.com/libyas-food-security-becoming-global-trade-question-3807215

https://preview.redd.it/maqink6r3boh1.png?width=1240&format=png&auto=webp&s=b887c2997a3c58d3697f2513de106091b12744f6

This conflict may be getting a lot bigger than Yemen.

The Houthis have just launched a major wave of missiles and drones at southern Saudi Arabia, hitting cities and energy infrastructure, including Aramco-related facilities and the Jizan refinery. Reports say 73 people were injured.

What worries me is the combination of energy infrastructure + Red Sea shipping.

If attacks like this continue, are we looking at a conflict that starts affecting oil prices, global trade and maritime security far beyond the immediate region?

Is this a serious regional escalation, or are we overestimating the wider impact?

Americans traveling to Libya are told to leave a DNA sample first.

That's not a metaphor. That's the actual U.S. State Department guidance. Highest level travel advisory. Kidnapping, terrorism, landmines, no functioning state to call if something goes wrong.

Here's the part that gets skipped.

Libya isn't poor. It has oil, a small population, a Mediterranean coastline, and more raw potential per capita than most of its neighbors. This isn't a resource problem. It's a state capacity problem.

And that raises a question worth sitting with.

In 2011, international intervention helped remove the old regime. What came after was never fully built. Fourteen years later, the U.S. government's own travel advisory reads like a status report on that gap.

So what actually explains it?

Is this mainly a story about outside powers losing interest once the hard, unglamorous work of state building stopped being urgent? Or is it mainly a story about Libyan factions choosing fragmentation and competing power centers over the compromises unity would require?

My honest read: both forces fed each other. International attention moves in cycles, it spikes during a crisis and fades once the cameras leave, and that made it easier for local actors to keep postponing the harder political settlement. Neither dynamic excuses the other. They reinforced each other.

The oil is still there. The location is still there. The population is still small enough that this shouldn't be an unsolvable problem.

What's missing is sustained follow-through, from Libyans and from the outside world, treating state building as a priority instead of an afterthought once the crisis stage passes.

That's the actual headline. Not the DNA samples.

https://preview.redd.it/cleji4y0runh1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=782cb364effea4a735a3e33dc4acc3287d13a13f

Qatar's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, visited Benghazi this week and met Saddam Haftar, the acting commander of the LNA. First senior Qatari visit to eastern Libya since the country split in 2014.

For context if you haven't followed this closely: Qatar has been one of the more consistently pro-Tripoli players in Libya for over a decade. Doha backed the GNA/GNU and factions aligned against Khalifa Haftar's forces going back to the 2014 civil war, while the eastern government and the LNA treated Qatar as hostile. That's not a minor diplomatic footnote, it's been one of the more stable alignments in a conflict where almost everything else has shifted.

This trip wasn't just symbolic either. Beyond meeting Saddam Haftar, the delegation met Belqasim Haftar, who runs Libya's Development and Reconstruction Fund, to discuss investment and reconstruction partnerships. They also met with the LNA's general command specifically to discuss military unification.

My read: this is less a diplomacy story and more a hedging story. Qatar spent a decade fully backing one side. Now it's building a relationship with the other, timed right as a new UN-brokered roadmap (the "4+4" agreement signed this past weekend) puts the LNA inside Libya's formal political process for the first time. If eastern Libya ends up with real institutional power once elections happen, Doha doesn't want to be the capital that has no relationship with Benghazi.

Curious what others think: is this a genuine reset in Qatar's Libya policy, or a hedge that doesn't survive contact with whatever Turkey and Egypt do next? Both have deeper, longer-standing interests on either side of this than Qatar does.

https://preview.redd.it/e9i1kjmr7pmh1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6089311ad94a6959049843b7e59627abec71d5fc