Italy's Eni Eyes Restart Of Operations In Libya

Cairo, Aug 29: Italian oil giant Eni SpA said Monday it signed a memorandum with Libya's rebels to restart a key natural gas pipeline and provide technical assessment of the country's oil infrastructure in hopes of quickly restarting its operations in the North African nation.

The deal came as Eni's chief executive, Paolo Scaroni, was in Benghazi meeting with officials from the National Transitional Council, Libya's rebel government. Eni was the largest foreign producer in the country before the civil war broke out, and its operations, mirroring Libya's oil sector in general, ground to a halt because of the fighting.

Under the terms of the deal, Eni and the NTC "are committed to creating the conditions for a rapid and complete recovery of Eni's activities in Libya and to doing all that is necessary to restart operations on the Greenstream pipeline," the company said in a statement.

The roughly 310-mile (520-kilometer) pipeline can carry about 11 billion cubic meters per year of natural gas from Libya's coast to Sicily, but it has not been operational since late February.

From: http://ping.fm/tbvTH