Foreign firms quietly return to Libya's oil rich east

Foreign companies are quietly returning to Libya's oil fields east of Sirte, deploying skeleton teams to an area of the hydrocarbon-rich basin near the Jakhira oasis, where almost a quarter of a million barrels of crude per day was pumped into pipelines bound for the coast before the war.

Germany's Wintershall is the latest firm to have sent a small group of Libyan workers to a cluster of oil fields, where sites jointly operated by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum Corp and Canada's Suncor Energy Inc are also in the process of restarting.

With Libya's prized crude pumping through the desert to the coastal terminal of Ras Lanuf, workers say the country's largest refinery could restart within days, with around 300,000 barrels of oil from already built up in tanks there.

Workers have been flown in on cargo flights but many pilots are nervous to cross Libya's skies that are still subject to a NATO-enforced no-fly zone.

But fears of an attack loom large and many Libyans are reluctant to leave the safety of their hometowns for remote sites southeast of Sirte, where fighting continues, and few foreign workers have returned.

Canada's Suncor said last week it was too early to comment on operations at its Amal field (jointly owned with Benghazi-based Agoco) while Occidental declined to comment on its 70,000 bpd Nafoora field also restarting in the area.

As fighters loyal to Libya's interim government continue to battle for control of central parts of the country, it could be months before oil workers lower their guard and the rest of the work force returns.

And while in other areas, off-shore fields operated by France's Total and fields further east operated by Italian oil and gas company Eni have also restarted, Libyan exports are still only trickling back into the world market machinery.

North Africa's fourth-largest producer exported 1.3 million bpd before the war, and since resuming production in September, has sold only a fraction of pre-war output.