Libya orders six tankers

Libya’s General National Maritime Transport Company has placed orders for six oil tankers valued at a total of $400 million. The contracts were signed with Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea for four vessels and Sasebo Heavy Industries in Japan for two units.

The tankers will have a total capacity of 700,000 tonnes of crude oil. The GNMT company exercises a near-monopoly in the transport of Libyan oil and its fleet currently comprises 18 tankers with a total capacity of 11.8 million barrels. With two million barrels per day, Libya is the third largest producer in Africa, after Nigeria and Angola. It plans to increase its production to three million barrels a day by 2013.