A rift has opened between Libya’s U.N.-backed government and its powerful National Oil Corporation (NOC), threatening the fractured country’s political cohesion and its nascent petroleum-industry recovery. On Monday, NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla announced that the country has built its oil production up to 760,000 barrels per day and planned to go ahead with plans to expand production to 1.1 million bpd by August of this year. Just a few days earlier, that same official openly criticized Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), a United Nations-backed government whose formation last year raised hopes of political unity in a nation divided by warring militant groups. Sanalla said the GNA aimed to wrest control of NOC’s petroleum deals for power over Libya’s economic future. Oil profits will be the lifeblood of any successful future government in Libya. Under Gaddafi’s reign, fossil fuels made up over 90 percent of Tripoli’s revenues, which the […]