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The National Oil Corporation appeals to whom it may concern in allowing it to operate Zouitina terminal immediately to reduce the stock and obtain extra storage capacities and warn of an imminent environmental disaster in the terminal
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) announces that it is doing its best to solve all the issues and technical problems it faces in displacing the Abu-Attefl and Zueitina crude and storing them in the tanks farm allocated at the Zueitina terminal. All of this is due to the wax property of the Abu-Attefl crude oil , it needs steering, continuous heating and non-stop otherwise it will freeze the line and therefore the losses may loose the inter pipeline.
The crude oil Abu-Attefl is produced from the fields of Abu-Attefl and Rimal in addition to the production from area 107 of the Sarir oil company, which is about 130 km from the field 103A of Zueitina company and is stored in its dedicated tanks containing heaters, steering system and then pumped to the port of Zueitina by displacing it with the Zueitina crude, a mixture of crude produced from each of the fields of 103 and Nafura of the Gulf Company and at strictly calculated rates.
What make matters worse, the sudden cessation of operations at the terminal of Zueitina forced the NOC and its companies to add a safe crude pump to the system in Zueitina, in order to ensure the complete displacement we have introduced the Amna crude in the line to the terminal of Zueitina and from there to the tanks allocated to it via the 40-inch line 212 km passing through a heating station to maintain its temperature to prevent waxing.
This line carrying more than 1 million barrels and is pumped in an orderly manner and the required tankers are also scheduled for these operations accurately so that these crudes are marked and felt with it properly.
The difficulties faced by NOC and its employees in both Zueitina and Mellitah companies today in storing the quantities of crude, especially Mellitah crude, should be known to everyone, as the tank farm of Abu-Attofel crude oil as well as the tanks of Zueitina do not have enough storage capacity to accommodate the Abu-Attofel crude oil due to the leaks that began to occur in these tanks whenever the height of the crude oil in the tank reaches a certain level leads to the rise of the weight of crude and therefore the bottom of the tank will not bear this weight.
The bottom of the tank will not bear this weight and the leakage begins to occur due to the inability of the company to carry out periodic maintenance of its tanks due to the lack of budgets during the past years, which amounted to not allocating any amounts to carry out maintenance and maintenance of equipment.
As mentioned above, we have lost a lot of storage capacity and therefore we will not be able to store all the quantity and we are at risk of losing the amount of crude and the line carrying it, due to its waxy nature or the leakage of crude oil from the tanks at the terminal and thus an environmental disaster.
Noting that these complex and emergency technical processes are accompanied by more difficult financial, accounting and marketing operations as a result of different partners and owners of oil shares.
Therefore, we appeal to whom it may concern in allowing the NOC to operate the terminal immediately or at the very least to allow us to ship one shipment to reduce inventory and obtain additional storage capacities at the terminal to accommodate what is on the line.
May Allah Bless Libya