Sometimes you'd think it is the job of a politician to be as vague as possible, and that the news media would have caught on by now. Business reporters must really be stretching to come up with new developments in Libya's oil industry these days if Reuters has really managed to turn a non-news item into a headline. I admit, I got all excited and clicked on the link when I saw "Libya's Interim Govt May Seek New Oil Bids", thinking that there must have been some great announcement of plans moving in that direction. Really, all this means is that the possibility of seeing a new round of Exploration and Production Sharing Agreements during the term of the current government has not definitively been taken off the table. This is no different than the state of things yesterday, but since the new oil & gas minister has made so few public statements thus far, everyone felt obligated to scramble for a story out of 'maybe' and 'perhaps'.
Asked whether Libya is likely to see another licensing round within the next 15 months, he said, “Could be, I am not sure, could be; it depends on the situation here in Libya”.
If future talks for a new EPSA round fail to materialize, or if Ministry plans to split the NOC into two companies with the downstream company headquartered in Benghazi fail to stir up enough ruckus to make good newspaper fodder there's always another exciting growing export to follow on Libya's oil beat -- olive oil.