The Ministry of Oil and Gas is telling the National Oil Corporation (NOC) to stop hanging their problems on the state's tight budget, days after the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned NOC, announced a leak in a pipeline transporting crude from the Sarir field to the Hariga oil port in Tobruk.
The company said the leakage is costing the state 220,000 barrels of oil per day, as it attributed the problem to the failure to maintain oil transmission lines due to the delay in budgets.
The Ministry of Oil insisted that "attributing all problems and challenges to the budget is unjustified."
"The NOC's job is to develop a clear policy based on the audits of the past years and the lessons learned," the ministry stated on Wednesday.
It noted that it has repeatedly asked the corporation to provide a clear vision of the detection and maintenance operations concerning surface equipment and management of reservoirs. The Oil Ministry, however, said it received no response or proposal from the NOC in this regard.
