*
Nigeria-like
risk from secessionists
* Nationalisation longer-term problem
* Regime change could make investment
climate more stable
(Updating with further analyst comment)
By Stephen Jewkes
oil-rich east of the country target
infrastructure and look
for a bigger slice of revenues, analysts said
on Monday.
oil operator Eni, gets around one fifth of its
energy consumption from the North African country.
Ninety percent of Libyan oil exports come
from the eastern
region of Cyrenaica, epicentre of the
revolt against
strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
"There's a real threat of instability
as secessionists in
the Cyrenaica area move," said Stefano Casertano,
senior
fellow at German think-tank BIGS-Potsdam.org.
"In 2009 there was an attempt to
redistribute oil
wealth to
the Libyan people, but the reform was
blocked and now it's
going to explode in their faces."different
from the popular
not top oil exporters.
Operators in Libya include Eni, BP, Royal Dutch Shell,
Repsol, OMV and Statoil. Many are repatriating staff.
"I have been following oil issues for 30
years and had not
seen anything like what is happening now
since the 1970s,"
said Davide Tabarelli, head of energy think-tank Nomisma
energie.
"In the 1970s, it was all concentrated
in a few countries,
we had the war with Israel. Now it's
worse."
recalled international staff from Libya and unrest
shut down
some 100,000 barrels per day of production.
It was the first output disruption since
popular unrest
to Egypt, where it unseated Hosni Mubarak
after 30 years of
rule.
NIGERIA-LIKE THREAT?
threatened to cut oil exports unless
authorities halted what
he called the "oppression of
protestors."
production are worrisome," said Christophe Barret,
an oil
analyst at Credit
Agricole Corporate and Investment
Bank.
Sabotage
of oil
facilities has been a threat to supplies in
have
struck plant belonging to Shell and Eni.
Christyan Malek,
an analyst at Deutsche Bank,
said Libyan
secessionist
groups could pose trouble but lacked critical
mass.
"The
military has run things with such an iron fist. It's
very
difficult to see how this could suddenly gather momentum
and
ultimately end with nationalisation of the country's
reserves,"
he said.
Fears
that foreign operations could be nationalised is a
longer-term
concern, with infrastructure damage
more immediate.
"Nationalisation
is probably a long-term risk, but in the
short
term it's not a question. Near term, it's
destruction, as simple
as that, along with disruption of
supply," said an oil analyst who
declined to be named.
Eni,
the biggest operator in Libya
with some 252,000
barrels
of oil
equivalent per day, said on Monday it was
repatriating
non-essential staff but added its operations are
unaffected.
But
oil is a major driver for
the Libyan economy and
whoever
wins out foreign oil
firms will be needed to pump
crude.
A change of government could even play out favourably
given
the fact that Gadaffi is such a capricious and
mercurial leader.
"(The
international oil
companies) have had to follow his
whims.
It's one of the few places where democracy could make
the
investment climate more stable," said Holly
Pattenden, head oil and gas analyst at Business Monitor
International.
(Additional
reporting by Ian Simpson
and Lisa Jucca
in
Milan, Emma Farge in London; Editing
by David Cowell
and Andrew
Hay)
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