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By Jamal Adel.
Beida, 25 April 2015:
The giant El Fil oilfield was subject to . . .[restrict]an emergency shut down today when dangerous pressure built in the system because, unbeknown to the field engineers, the pipeline to Zuwara had been shut down by Zintani members of the Petroleum Facilities Guard.
It has frequently been the case that notice of such blockages has been given to the fields to be affected. The Tebu PFG commander at El Fil, Hassan Koshiyami, however told the Libya Herald that no such warning was given for the blockage at the Al-Hamada compound. Therefore “extreme and unexpected pressures” had occurred because the engineers had not immediately noticed what was happening.
“The PFG at the Al-Hamada turned off the taps fully which then forced El Fil to stop production unexpectedly” said Koshiyama, adding that the field manager, Abdulfatah Bani, had confirmed to him that he had not been warned of the pipeline being shut.
It is not clear why the Zintanis cut the flow from the field, which is in the Murzuq basin, though it seems likely that they wanted to stop crude reaching Dawn-controlled Zuwara. The Zintanis, allied like the Tebu with the government in Beida, control the Al-Wafa field in the Ghadames basin. Three months ago after a joint Libya Dawn force of Misratan and Tuaregs seized the Sharara field, Libya’s third-largest, in the Obari basin, the Zintanis cut the pipeline near Reyayna in the Jebel Nafusa, blocking further flows to Libya Dawn-controlled Zawia.
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