<> "One of the most critical issues facing the oil industry today is access to new oil reserves, and Libya represents tremendous resources," said Clarence Cazalot, the chief executive of Marathon Oil in Houston. "There are many, many people who are descending into Tripoli to talk to the same people we're talking to," Mr. Cazalot said during a 24-hour visit here to attend a business conference and meet privately with Shukri Ghanem, the Libyan prime minister. <>
The New York Times: January 2, 2005 Libya Tempts Executives With Big Oil Reserves By JAD MOUAWAD http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/business/02libya.html? RIPOLI, Libya - For the first time in a decade, a new oil territory is opening up. Reopening, that is.
American oil executives have recently been flocking to Libya, crowding the lobby of Tripoli's only luxury hotel and literally standing in line to meet local officials. The executives are bent on finding out whether this oil-rich North African country - long walled off from foreign investment because of its anti-American regime and ties to terrorist organizations - could become the next frontier for exploration.
What the petroleum crowd is after lies hundreds of miles south of this enclave founded by Phoenician traders in the seventh century B.C., beneath a desert the size of Alaska that holds oil reserves estimated at over 36 billion barrels. That is enough to meet the daily imports of the United States for eight years.
And that may be just a starting point. At a time when oil around the world is harder to come by, Libya is dangling the rights to explore and develop new sources of petroleum. The country holds the largest oil reserves in Africa, but as a producer it trails Nigeria and Angola. And, as every Libyan official inevitably points out, only a quarter of the country has properly been explored for oil.
But that is where the problems start. Libya is a highly authoritarian state, fraught with tangled bureaucracy, rampant corruption and arbitrary enforcement of laws. Its regime is based on an elaborate fusion of socialism and Islam - dubbed the Third Universal Theory - that was Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's answer to both capitalism and communism after he took control of the country in the late 1960's.
Such tribulations are nothing new for oil executives, many of whom have previously traveled to hostile and far-flung places around the globe in search of oil.
They, along with other Americans, are certainly eager to do business here: the newly opened American liaison office said it receives more than 200 inquiries a week from interested companies.
In the next few months, several dozen oil companies will be watching as the Libyan government unveils the winners of new licenses that have attracted intense interest from major and independent producers.
The surge in oil prices in 2004 turned the spotlight on the urgency to increase global oil supplies. The price shock underscored the lack of sufficient production capacity around the globe, stretching producers to pump at their maximum to meet runaway demand.
But for oil companies that must continually replenish their production with new reserves, the exploration options are narrowing.
In the Middle East, home to the bulk of the world's known oil, most countries remain shut to foreign investors. In the United States and Europe's North Sea, production from mature fields is in decline. Even in Russia, considered by many to be the most promising energy supplier in the world, access is threatened as the government tightens its grip on the local industry.
The last significant oil discoveries were made off the West African coast in the 1990's, and these are being produced.
So executives are now paying very close attention to a country that until recently was synonymous with international terrorism and whose leader was once infamously called a "mad dog" by President Ronald Reagan. <>
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