{{Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has threatened to use force to prevent guards striking at the country’s main ports from selling oil independently.}}<\/p>\n
He said any ship approaching the ports which does not have a contract with Libya’s official oil company would be “bombed from the sea or the air”.<\/p>\n
The workers have been striking over pay for several weeks.<\/p>\n
Officials say the protests have caused a drop in Libya’s oil exports and are harming the economy.<\/p>\n
“If the blockade of these oil terminals continues, the state will be obliged to use its power, and all the forces at its disposal, including the army,” Mr Zeidan warned.<\/p>\n
He said that the ports of Zeitunia, Brega, Ras Lanouf and Sedra had been closed by the protesters’ action.<\/p>\n
Oil Minister Abdelbari al-Arusi said that Libya had lost about $1.6bn (\u00a31bn) in revenue since 25 July because of the disruption.<\/p>\n
Libya’s oil production has fallen from a peak of 1.6 million barrels per day to around 650,000, the lowest level since the uprising that ousted Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.<\/p>\n
That in turn has been putting pressure on oil prices in global markets in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
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{{Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has threatened to use force to prevent guards striking at the country’s main ports from selling oil independently.}} He said any ship approaching the ports which does not have a contract with Libya’s official oil company would be “bombed from the sea or the air”. The workers have been striking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9760"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9760"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}