Commodities giant Glencore has extended its deal with Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) to be the exclusive trader of around 230,000 bpd of Libya's current crude oil production of around 700,000 bpd, Reuters reported on Monday, citing sources familiar with the deal.
According to the extended deal - whose period was not immediately known - Glencore is entitled to be the sole trader of some 230,000 bpd from the oil fields Sarir and Mesla, Reuters sources say.
The agreement gives Glencore advantage over commodity trading rivals Vitol and Trafigura in Libya's crude oil trading market for a second year in a row.
"It is a big mosaic at the moment, but Glencore has kept a large chunk of the trade," one source told Reuters.
In October last year Glencore's global head of oil Alex Beard said that the mining and commodity trading giant would be seeking to take on more crude oil trading in Iraq, Iran, Libya and Russia in a bid to boost its trading division.
At the time Beard said, speaking at the Reuters Commodities Summit:
"We're very happy with our relationship with NOC and we've been very pleased to support them through some difficult times in the last 12 months and we're open to do more business there."
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Back in 2015, Glencore secured a deal with Libya's NOC to buy half of the country's then oil output of around 400,000 bpd. That deal was for the only relatively stable onshore production in Libya at the time, with civil unrest and port blockades crippling the country's oil production in recent years.
Lately, Libya has recovered its crude oil production to around 700,000 bpd in January. The country seeks to increase oil production to 1.25 million bpd by the end of 2017 and 1.6 million bpd by 2022, the chairman of Libya's National Oil Corporation, Mustafa Sanalla, said last month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More