Libya’s National Oil Corporation has secured a landmark governance breakthrough in the Murzuq Basin, engineering a unified operating agreement for the I/R oil field that brings five of the world’s major international energy companies under a single, consolidated operational and administrative framework for the first time — a structural reform the NOC says will sharpen production efficiency, eliminate duplicated management, and shore up sustainable output from one of the country’s most strategically significant oil-producing regions.
The agreement was signed by representatives of Akakus Oil Operations alongside TotalEnergies, Repsol, Equinor, and OMV — the partners in the NC115 and NC186 concessions within the Murzuq Basin in southwestern Libya. The deal consolidates what had previously been fragmented operational and governance arrangements across the two concessions into a single unified framework covering the shared I/R field.
The NOC framed the agreement in direct operational terms: it is designed to strengthen cooperation and coordination among the partners, unify the procedural and administrative systems governing the field, improve performance efficiency, optimise resource utilisation, and underpin stable, sustainable production from Murzuq — one of the basins that most directly underpins Libya’s national output levels and public revenue base.
Beyond the immediate operational implications, the NOC signalled a broader strategic intent. The corporation described the agreement as an important step toward applying best practices in governance and management across its basin operations, and said the deal reinforces the confidence of international energy companies in Libya’s energy sector and its long-term investment prospects — a message directed as much at the wider market as at the five companies already at the table.
The Murzuq Basin is one of Libya’s most consequential oil-producing regions. Its fields have historically contributed meaningfully to the country’s production base, and maintaining operational continuity there is a critical plank of the NOC’s broader ambition to push national output toward 1.6 million barrels per day and eventually to 2 million barrels per day. A unified operating structure eliminates the inefficiencies and potential conflicts that can arise from parallel management of shared reservoir assets — making the agreement as much a production strategy as an administrative one.
The deal also carries symbolic weight at a moment when Libya continues to rebuild international confidence in its upstream sector. The presence of four European and multinational majors — TotalEnergies, Repsol, Equinor and OMV — as active signatories sends a signal that institutional commitment to Libyan operations remains intact despite the country’s turbulent decade of instability.
Source: libyaobserver.ly