The director of Eni’s North Africa and Levant division for Italy stated on Monday that the company viewed Libya as a crucial nation for upstream operations and that it intended to begin exploring in the Ghadames basin the following year.

“We have never stopped looking at Libya as a crucial region for oil and gas production,” Martina Opizzi said during a panel discussion on Libya’s energy sector organised in Rome by Energy Capital & Power.

“We estimate that there are still resources to be discovered and we are also planning offshore exploration shortly,” Opizzi added.

Oil exports at major Libyan ports were halted last month. Production was curtailed across the country amid a standoff between rival political factions over control of the central bank and oil revenue.

Production started to recover in the first half of September, but the dispute on the central bank has not be resolved.

Parts of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya are included in the vast intra-cratonic Ghadames Basin. The three nations are each carrying out separate petroleum exploration projects in their respective basins, employing various play models and, as a result, producing various exploration outputs.

A United Nations spokesperson has said that Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, is “gravely alarmed” by reports of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) launching a full-scale offensive on al-Fashir and has ordered its leader to stop it.

The spokesperson said Guterres warned further escalation might expand the crisis across western Darfur.

“He calls on Lt. General Mohamed Hamdan ‘Hemedti’ Dagalo to act responsibly and immediately order a halt to the RSF attack,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. “It is unconscionable that the warring parties have repeatedly ignored calls for a cessation of hostilities.”

Last April, the Sudanese army and RSF went to war, causing the world’s worst displacement crisis. The rising violence near al-Fashir risks inter-communal conflict, according to U.N. authorities.

The United States national security advisor Jake Sullivan said on Saturday that President Joe Biden and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan will discuss the issue on Monday.

“We are concerned about several countries and the steps they are taking to perpetuate rather than resolve the conflict,” Sullivan told reporters. “Our ultimate objective is to get the entire conflict with Sudan on a different track than the tragic and horrific track it is on right now. And I think that requires some intense but sensitive diplomatic conversations with several players.”

In June, the U.N. Security Council urged that the RSF stop sieging al-Fashir, a metropolis of 1.8 million people in Sudan’s North Darfur region, and that fighting halt.

The resolution also ordered the departure of all fighters who endanger residents in al-Fashir, the last major city in Darfur not under RSF authority.

U.N. estimates 300,000 people were killed in Darfur in the early 2000s when “Janjaweed” militias, from which the RSF evolved, helped the army quell a non-Arab insurrection. The ICC wants Sudanese leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity.
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