Is The Libyan War Coming To An End?

This Weekend, Libya’s Fate Is Decided

Breaking developments in Libya suggest that this is the end game, and what happens over the weekend will determine the fate of Libyan oil. General Haftar has not yet confirmed a ceasefire announced by the speakers of parliament of both rival governments on Friday. This is either the calm before the storm or the start of negotiations to end the crippling oil blockade and hold elections for a new government. 

If a ceasefire does not succeed, Sirte - the gateway to Libya’s oil facilities - will become an instant battleground for regional forces. The Egyptian military, Russian mercenaries, and Haftar’s LNA (with UAE weaponry) against Turkish forces, Syrian and other mercenaries, and the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA).  

A couple of days ago, Egypt’s Al-Sisi sent a message by courier to General Haftar - right after a meeting in Tripoli between the defense ministers of Turkey and Qatar (both allies of the GNA). No one knows what the message said, but Egypt is locked and loaded for military action in Sirte. So, at this point, there are only two options: A ceasefire or an all-out military confrontation between Turkey/Qatar and Egypt/Haftar, which would have massive implications for the entire region. There would be no coming back from a confrontation on that level, and it would spread across the region. 

The lead-up to this saw some interesting statements regarding Haftar’s apparent approval of the ports’ opening up temporarily to load crude from some storage tanks. Some of that crude/condensate would be allowed for export, and some would be sent to the east to resolve a power supply crisis. It was clear that it was not a lifting of the oil blockade and only a brief emptying of storage tanks, but the nature of the communications suggested that something was changing. Also, the fact that the NOC did not follow this up with its usual press release indicated that it remained extremely fluid. 

While there are plenty of talking heads out there who are fond of saying that the GNA/Turkey alliance has the upper hand since they scuppered Haftar’s attempt to take Tripoli, we would have to disagree. Egypt changes this game, and Cairo isn’t just allying with Haftar. It’s also been courting mighty tribes around Sirte, with its intelligence agencies even hosting a massive conference in Cairo where it brought together all of the sheiks from Libya’s Supreme Tribal Council last month. If a ceasefire deal indeed emerges today and sustains through the weekend, it likely means that Egypt has drawn a line in the sand with its weaponry and alliances well beyond Haftar, giving it the upper hand. 

AND

While the brinkmanship going on in the Mediterranean is as intense as the run-up to any major conflict, it is indeed “good news” that Turkish President Erdogan’s Friday announcement turned out to be a gas discovery in the Black Sea and not the Eastern Mediterranean. 

Earlier this week, Erdogan said he would have “good news” on Friday. The rumor was that it was a gas discovery, which saw the Turkish Lira rise against the dollar and refining and petrochemical stocks make gains, along with the Istanbul stock exchange. 

As promised, on Friday morning, Erdogan announced a gas discovery in the Tuna-1 zone off the Danube block in the crossroads between the Bulgarian and Romanian maritime borders in the Black Sea. Erdogan claims Turkish exploration has discovered around 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which he says are “only a piece of a larger resource.” If true, it is Turkey’s most significant find to date, but questions remain about how much can actually be commercially extracted. It’s also worth noting that it could be a decade before it's ready to be extracted. Turkey consumes about 1.6 trillion cubic feet of gas domestically a year. 

More importantly, though, for Turkey is the fact that this is a tool for leverage in Turkey’s geopolitical ambitions in the region. Turkey desperately needed a discovery because it has lost all relevance in the region’s energy equation, which is exactly what all of its provocations from Cyprus and Greece to Libya and Syria are about. And it is also good for Turkey that this discovery was not in the Eastern Mediterranean or in disputed territory, so it will not be hampered in potential development should this discovery be proved up. Turkey also has the TurkStream pipeline in the Black Sea to enable exports. An Eastern Mediterranean find would have also given it leverage, but it would have been a geopolitical football and far more dangerous. 

The discovery announcement comes just days after Turkey dispatched a drillship off Cyprus’ southwestern coast in another bid to fuel the fires of an ongoing territorial dispute in this same area. It also comes amid a maritime dispute with Greece, which is fighting back with a new maritime delimitation deal with Egypt. Egypt, at the same time, is Turkey’s nemesis in Libya, where Turkey itself has redrawn maritime borders. 

In other words, the entire eastern Mediterranean is being redrawn, and it could easily lead to a massive regional confrontation at sea that will necessarily draw in enough forces to brand it a global conflict of major proportions. 

Turkey resumed exploration off the coast of Greece on Monday after Germany - the mediator in diplomatic talks with Greece - refused to approve an EU statement calling for an immediate cessation of exploration by Turkey. This is prompting a wider diplomatic row, with Greece then refusing to support an EU resolution on Belarus in retaliation (more on that this week in our Global Forecasts column).