Libya: Oil Company calls for release of abducted employees

The Libyan National Oil Company (NOC) on Monday called on tribes in the south of the country to release two of its employees, including a Romanian national, kidnapped on an oil field on Saturday.

No group claimed responsibility Abduction but NOC President Moustafa Sanalla assured that the Company would not pay "a single dinar for blackmail (…) or kidnappings".

"We call on local people in the Ubari region (…), especially our Tuareg and Toubou brothers (…) to use reason and release our two employees as soon as possible," he said. Mr. Sanalla during a demonstration with his colleagues in front of the headquarters of the NOC in Tripoli.

According to the security services, four engineers – three Libyan and one Romanian – were kidnapped Saturday by an armed group on the al-Charara field in the region of Ubari (about 900 km south of Tripoli) but the NOC had subsequently indicated that two of them had been released.

"We thank God that two of our colleagues have returned safely and pray for the return of" the other two, "Achraf Messallem and our Romanian colleague" Sanalla said the situation was "unbearable."

"Oil workers should be honored and respected, not kidnapped," he added, visibly angry.

This new kidnapping took place ten days after that of three Filipino engineers and another South Korean who were working on a hydraulic project also located in the southern desert of Libya.

He also intervenes a few weeks after the release of three Turkish nationals kidnapped eight months earlier in the south of the country where they participated in the construction of a power station.

Since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, the foreign workers and diplomatic representations in Libya are regularly the target of attacks and kidnappings by powerful militias or by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).

The oil structures are not spared by the prevailing insecurity and are often the target of attacks by rival armed groups or abusive occupations for social demands.

Libya has Africa's most abundant oil reserves and relies heavily on these resources to support its now fragile economy.