Background
The company was initially known as Esso Standard Libya Inc., the first company to discover commercial quantities of crude oil in the Zelten oil field. In 1981, Exxon (parent company of Esso Standard) withdrew their Libyan operations, after which Sirte Oil Company was formed as a NOC subsidiary. In 1986, SOC took over the assets of Grace Petroleum, one of the five U.S. companies forced by the US government to leave Libya. In 1991, SOC merged with the National Petrochemical Company, creating the Sirte Oil Company for Production, Manufacturing of Oil and Gas. Activities included oil refining, liquefaction of natural gas and petrochemicals (methanol, ammonia and urea).
SOC operates the Raguba field in the central part of the Sirte Basin. The field is connected by pipeline to the main line between the Nasser field, one of the largest in Libya, and Brega. Besides Nasser, SOC is in charge of two other gas fields - Attahadi and Assumud - plus the Marsa el-Brega liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. The LNG plant at Brega processed about 900 million cubic meters per year, or about 700,000 metric tons per year, of natural gas. In 2000, SOC reportedly made a 13-billion-cubic-meter-per-year natural gas discovery in the Sirte Basin (Africa Energy Intelligence, 2000a, b).
Read more about this topic: Sirte Oil Company
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