The Chairman of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) Mustafa Sanallah, said the agreement between western municipalities and officials from Ben Guerdane in Tunisia is a blindingly obvious endeavor to legalize smuggling and shelve Libya’s laws.

According to the NOC official website, Sanallah said, in a meeting at the General Assembly of Al-Zawiya Oil Refinery, that the agreement is totally rejected by the NOC and called on the western municipalities to concentrate on fighting smuggling within their administrative borders inside Libya so that they can lessen the suffering of the residents, who are bearing the consequences of smuggling and the fuel crisis.

“We denounce the security breaches done by Al-Naser Brigade of the western Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), which is responsible for smuggling the fuel of the Libyan local markets.” Sanallah added, pointing out that the acts of that brigade are economic and internationally-organized crimes that lost Libya’s public treasury millions of dollars on a monthly basis.

“We could use those millions to rebuild Libya or to construct new hospitals, schools or new pavements or to dig new water wells. We could use those millions in improving the power and phone networks or to better the living conditions of Libyans as the country is suffering from an acute shortage of cash.” Sanallah remarked.

The Chief of the Ras Ajdair border crossing, Mohammed Jarrafa, refused earlier to implement the agreement saying the municipalities that signed it were not authorized to do so and thus they infringed the authorities of the state institutions.

“The points of the agreement are very humiliating to Libya and we cannot agree on them.” Jarrafa remarked.