Libya—The National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced that it had succeeded in repairing a major and sudden technical failure, which affected the whole Mellitah Oil complex, and by 23:48 before midnight on Friday, operations were fully restored. The complex is located about 80 kms west of the capital Tripoli
“The National Oil Corporation confirms that supplies have gradually returned, and that the gas flow rate has reached more than 540 million cubic feet per day, and that work is continuing to operate all units to return to pumping normally,’ NOC said in a statement published on its web site early Saturday.
“Thanks to God and to the efforts of the national cadres at Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex,” it said.
NOC added that the acting Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Corporation, Masoud Suleiman, was directly following the developments in the complex immediately after the failure occurred. Suleiman has confirmed that there has been no significant disruption to the network or load shedding as a result of this emergency technical failure, it said.
On Friday evening, NOC announced, “Mellitah Gas Complex was subjected to a complete shutdown early Friday evening, due to a technical failure in the power generation units. It resulted in a complete blackout in all the complex’s facilities, including the shutdown of the gas processing plant in the complex, and the cessation of production in the Bahr Al-Salam gas field”.
NOC said its specialists, engineers and technicians immediately had dealt with this technical failure professionally, and took all emergency measures followed in such incidental circumstances.
“After resorting to operating emergency power stations, working to restart the gas processing plant, and then operating the Bahr Al-Salam platform and resuming gas production.
“The National Oil Corporation confirms that the maintenance teams at the Mellitah Oil and Gas Complex are working to repair this sudden technical failure within a short time, and to restart the complex at its normal capacity and continue production as usual,” NOC confidently said at the outset of the failure.
In early May 2024, Eni said Mellitah Oil and Gas was a victim of a hacker attack, according to Agenzia Nova. A group called RansomHub claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on the company and demanded $50 million in order not to publish one terabyte of data.
At the time, production and operational activities were not affected and the compromised IT systems were gradually restored.
