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By Taziz Hasairi and Nigel Ash.
Tripoli, 4 December 2013:
The power cuts that have once again been plaguing Western Libya may be . . .[restrict]about to end, with a deal among Amazigh protestors, that could see a resumption of gas to the key Western Mountains power station at Ruwais.
The present pipeline obstruction and the past occupation and stopping of the Mellitah oil and gas processing plant, have been part of a campaign to obtain greater recognition for the Amazigh language Tamazight and greater representation in the 60 Committee charged with drafting the new constitution.
This evening members of the Amazigh Supreme Council apparently convinced the young militants who had been blocking the oil and gas line from the Wafa field to Mellitah to end their action.
If the deal, to be announced formally tomorrow at Tripoli’s Rixos hotel, actually sticks, then National Oil Company engineers are expected within hours to be repairing damaged pumping facilities near Nalut. However, one engineer told the Libya Herald this evening: “ It may not be a simple matter of just fixing one point. The line may need a full inspection, because other groups might have tried to damage it elsewhere and with the shut down that damage has not been detected”.
It may therefore be some days at least, before the flow of processed gas from Mellitah to Ruwais is resumed. Meanwhile queues of motorists at fuel stations in and around the capital continued to be a feature today, as drivers feared a repeat of the summer’s fuel shortages.
Fewer power cuts have been reported in Tripoli, though central Benghazi suffered its first recent outage early this evening. It is not yet clear what caused blackout. The Libyan national grid is divided into east and west, connected at a single point which enables up to 500 megawatts to be transferred in either direction.
There are conflicting reports about the Sarir power station in the south east, off the road to Kufra. Though the highway to its north has been blocked to commercial traffic for almost a week, with a break of a few hours, a manager at thrower station was reported as saying that there was still sufficient fuel to run for a further 48 hours. The Sarir station requires around a million litres of fuel a day, which is brought in some 35 tankers. However, other reports suggests that the facility has been taken completely offline.
The Tebu protestors responsible for the road block are demanding that the small town of Rebyana, west of Kufra, be connected to the electricity grid, and be given its own an independent municipal council, while the Tebu areas of Kufra should have a sub-council, independent of the town’s Arab-controlled body. [/restrict]
