Libya Is Selling Europe Gas It Currently Cannot Export
LIBYA · ENERGY
Key Facts
—The plan: The National Oil Corporation says it intends to raise gas production to about one billion standard cubic feet a day over five years, and to begin shale exploration in the second half of 2026.
—When it was said: NOC chairman Masoud Suleiman set this out at the LNG 2026 conference in Doha in early February 2026. No restatement has followed since.
—The reality: Libyan gas exports to Italy averaged 105 million cubic feet a day in 2025, the lowest in more than two decades and 22 percent down on the year before.
—The route: Greenstream, the subsea pipeline to Sicily, is Libya’s only gas export outlet. Its capacity is 8 billion cubic metres a year, about 775 million cubic feet a day.
—The reason: The NOC said in late July that flows to Italy are no more than 10 percent of its Italian partner’s share, kept up for technical reasons to preserve pipeline integrity. Domestic power generation takes the rest.
—The projects: Eni and the NOC started up the Sabratha compression project in late June 2026. The Bouri gas utilisation project, valued at about US$1.56 billion, is due to begin using 125 million cubic feet a day from September.
—The oil comparison: Crude output reached about 1.44 million barrels a day in June 2026, plus condensate, the highest since 2013. The gas story has gone the other way.
Libya gas exports to Italy fell to 105 million cubic feet a day in 2025, the lowest in 22 years, which is the number to hold in mind against the National Oil Corporation’s stated ambition of producing a billion cubic feet a day and selling more of it to Europe.
What Libya has actually promised on gas
The plan was set out by NOC chairman Masoud Suleiman at the LNG 2026 conference in Doha in early February. Libya intends to raise gas production to about one billion standard cubic feet a day over the following five years, and to boost exports to Europe by around 2030.
A standard cubic foot is the industry’s fixed measure of gas volume, so the figure can be compared across fields and years. One billion of them a day would be a large gas industry.
He also said shale gas exploration would begin in the second half of 2026. That half of the year is now largely gone, and no source reports that drilling has started.
The NOC puts Libya’s gas reserves, conventional and unconventional together, at 80 trillion cubic feet. It signalled a new licensing round in 2026 that might include unconventional or marginal fields.
This is a February announcement rather than a fresh one. No new gas production figures have been published since.
The number that complicates all of it: Libya gas exports
Libyan gas deliveries to Italy averaged 105 million cubic feet a day across 2025, according to Middle East Economic Survey, an energy trade publication. That is down 22 percent year on year, the sixth consecutive annual decline, and the lowest figure since 2003.
Set against the 2007 peak of 964 million cubic feet a day, current flows are about 11 percent of what the route once carried. Against Greenstream’s nameplate capacity of roughly 775 million cubic feet a day, meaning the volume the pipeline was built to carry, utilisation is running near 14 percent.
Greenstream is not one option among several. It is Libya’s only gas export outlet, running subsea from the Mellitah complex to Gela in Sicily.
The gas is going to Libyan power stations
The NOC explained the position itself in a statement issued in late July. Volumes reaching Italy represent no more than 10 percent of the Italian partner’s total share, maintained for purely operational and technical reasons related to the pipeline’s integrity.
In other words, the flow exists to keep the pipe alive rather than to sell gas. The corporation said it has consistently bought back the majority of that share for the domestic market, under the domestic gas supply agreement that takes priority over the export agreement.
The politics behind that statement are not subtle. It followed acute power cuts, protests, and demonstrators storming the Mellitah gas complex, after a mid-July blackout took out 1,350 megawatts along the coast from Misrata to the Egyptian border.
Any new Libyan gas therefore has a domestic claim on it before it has an export market. That is the structural fact the one billion cubic feet target has to overcome.
What is actually being built
Eni and the NOC started up the Sabratha compression project in late June 2026, on the Bahr Essalam field about 100 kilometres offshore. It installs a 1,600-tonne compression module with compression capacity of roughly 440 million standard cubic feet a day, securing around 800 million cubic metres a year of gas plus condensate.
Compression means squeezing the gas so that an ageing field keeps flowing at a usable pressure. It sustains output rather than creating new reserves, and the two figures are frequently conflated.
The Structures A and E development in the offshore contractual Area D is the larger prize, with a planned plateau of 750 million standard cubic feet a day. Its timing has slipped, with some accounts describing full operation only by the end of 2027.
The Bouri gas utilisation project, valued at about US$1.56 billion, is designed to capture 125 million cubic feet a day that is currently flared, meaning burned off as waste at the field, with the NOC targeting a September 2026 start. The gas is meant first for the local market, with any surplus available for export.
A definition problem worth flagging
Libyan monthly statistics reported for June 2026 imply gross gas output of roughly 2.4 billion cubic feet a day, of which the majority was consumed domestically. If that is right, a target of one billion cubic feet a day cannot refer to total production.
It most likely denominates marketed or export-available gas, or a particular subset of fields. No source resolves the question, and the ambiguity should make any reader cautious about comparing the target to current output.
Almost every production and reserve figure in this story is an NOC claim, in a country where output statistics are contested between rival administrations. The independent numbers here come from trade press and from Eni.
Why Europe keeps looking anyway
Libya sits on Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and lies a short pipeline run from Sicily. Since 2022 that geography has been worth more to European buyers than it was for the preceding decade.
The NOC awarded five exploration blocks from its 2025 licensing round in February 2026, and production-sharing contracts with partners including Eni, TotalEnergies, Repsol and MOL were being signed into mid-June. Chevron has signed memoranda to study Libyan acreage, including unconventional potential, which is assessment rather than drilling.
The crude side shows what is possible. Output reached about 1.44 million barrels a day in June, the highest since 2013, and the NOC says it aims to reach 1.5 million barrels of crude a day by the end of the year.
Gas has not followed, and the reason is not geology. It is that Libyans need the electricity, and a government facing blackouts and protests will not export its way out of that.
Frequently asked questions
How much gas does Libya export to Italy?
Exports averaged 105 million cubic feet a day in 2025, down 22 percent year on year and the lowest in more than two decades. Greenstream, the only export route, has capacity of about 775 million cubic feet a day.
What is Libya’s gas production target?
The National Oil Corporation said in February 2026 that it aims for about one billion standard cubic feet a day within five years, and to increase European exports by around 2030.
Why are exports so low?
The NOC says flows to Italy are no more than 10 percent of its Italian partner’s share and are maintained for technical reasons to preserve pipeline integrity. Domestic power generation takes priority under the domestic supply agreement.
Has Libya started shale gas drilling?
No source reports that drilling has begun. The NOC said in February that exploration would start in the second half of 2026.
Sources
Eni and the National Oil Corporation published the project details directly. The export figures come from Middle East Economic Survey, the domestic-supply explanation from Ecofin Agency, and the Doha announcement from Libya Herald. Reuters covered the Mellitah storming.
Connected Coverage
The contrast with the oil side is set out in Libya pumping like it is 2013 while Libyans see little of it, and the security risk in drone attacks on the country’s biggest working refinery. The wider energy contest runs through Africa: The New Scramble, with more on our Northern Africa hub.
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