Shokri Ghanem is back at the top of the NOC, after resigning a few weeks ago. (image: arabianoilandgas.com)

Ending weeks of uncertainty about its oil industry’s direction, Libya has reappointed Shokri Ghanem, who resigned as head of the National Oil Company just weeks ago, back to the position he held for years. As reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday, a top Libyan government official said that Ghanem was back in the NOC’s corner office, but declined to provide details.

It’s not surprising for a dictatorship, but definitive information about Libya’s oil industry has been difficult to come by. For example, just three weeks ago Forbes reported that Ali Mohammed Saleh was appointed head of the NOC. However, today’s Journal article states that no permanent chairman was appointed after Ghanem stepped down—just an acting chair named Ali El Sogher. The two articles even disagree about how much oil Libya pumps: Forbes claims 1.7 million barrels per day, while the Journal gives the number at 1.55 million, or around 9 percent less.

Still, one thing appears to be clear: Ghanem’s short-lived departure occurred in the context of a power struggle between conservative and reformist forces. Ghanem, with plenty of international experience, had been the champion of those who wanted to open up Libya to outside investors, while Saleh represented those who wanted to a take a cautious, slow approach to allowing international involvement in Libya’s oil industry.

With Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, Libya is an important oil producer and OPEC member. However, years of international sanctions and erratic rule have left the nation’s all-important oil sector as a perennial underperformer, consistently missing its production quotas.

Whether Ghanem’s reappointment helps begin to reverse that—and even whether it lasts!—remain to be seen.

Libya, near the intersection of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. (image: cia.gov)

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Libya is located in northern Africa, on the southern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Bordered by Egypt to the east, Algeria to the west, and Niger, Chad, and Sudan to the south, Libya occupies a strategic position, near the intersection of Southern Europe, Islamic Africa, and the Middle East, and touching on non-Islamic Africa as well. The nation has long used its position to extort tribute from the rest of the world—even before Libya was Libya, Tripoli (its capital city) was one of the famed “Barbary Pirate” states that preyed on Mediterranean shipping, leaving a nation’s commerce alone if it paid Tripoli “protection money.”

After the discovery of large petroleum deposits, Libya again leveraged its strategic resources (now oil rather than its location astride trade routes) to secure tribute—though the tribute often took the form of investment. Libya under Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s leader since his successful and bloodless coup in 1969, has pursued its interests despite becoming a pariah in the global community; Qaddafi’s sponsorship of terrorism, support for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and warm relationship with the Soviet Union led to economic sanctions and Libya’s isolation. Yet Qaddafi’s recent willingness to abandon terrorism and Libya’s weapons of mass destruction have allowed Libya to reestablish diplomatic relations with the Western world and bring Libya’s oil-dominated economy back into the world market.