Watching Libya April 8, 2011

As the Transitional National Council (TNC) requests arms, and more but better coordinated NATO air support, former energy and industry minister Omar Fathi Bin Shatwan - now in Malta - says that several of Gheddafi’s ministers would leave Tripoli but fear for their families prevents them from doing so.

Omar Fathi Bin Shatwan, a former Libyan minister – during his career as cabinet member he was entrusted with various portfolios including energy in 2004-6 and after the March 2006 reshuffle secretary (minister) for industry, electricity and mines – fled with his family from his hometown Misratah on the Libyan-flagged trawler ‘Alintishar’ to Malta where he arrived on April 1. After leaving political office in 2007, he worked as an academic in Tripoli but is understood to have kept in touch with some of his former colleagues. Many of them would leave the country, he says, if it was not for the fact that they and their families are not free to move. Their families are practically kept hostage. This, in his view, includes some of Muammar Gheddafi's inner circle.  It is clear from his narrative that fear is a major factor explaining why the regime has not yet disintegrated.

Speaking to AP, he urged NATO to step up its campaign to prevent further loss of life. During his 40 days bunkered down in Misratah, his house was shelled and he personally witnessed civilians being sniped at by Gheddafi's forces which he described as mercenaries led by a few Libyans. In his view, after the 1969 take-over by Gheddafi, Libya went through a decade of improvement, a slowing down over the next 20 years and "terrible decline" over the last 10. 

From our background research: When he was responsible for energy, Omar Fathi Bin Shatwan was perceived to be competing over turf with the powerful National Oil Company (NOC). When Bin Shatwan was moved from energy to industry, his energy secretariat was abolished. In March 2004, the General People's Congress (GPC) decided to restructure the oil sector to better manage the expected surge in interest from international companies in new Exploration & Production (E&P) blocks as well as incoming foreign investment. An energy secretariat (ministry) was set up and entrusted to Bin Shatwan. There had been no energy ministry since its first abolition in 2000.

The new ministry was assigned the task of drafting energy policy and E&P negotiating strategy, a role previously falling under the responsibility of NOC. The creation of Bin Shatwan's ministry meant a downgrading of NOC's responsibilities to the mere execution of decisions taken by Bin Shatwan and approved by the then prime minister Shukri Ghanem, himself a technocrat and former head of secretariat and director of research at OPEC. Also in March 2004, Abdullah Salem Al-Badri took over the chairmanship of NOC from Abdel Hafiz Mahmoud Zlitni.

It appears that there was also some friction between Bin Shatwan and the then prime minister Ghanem, an indication of which emerges from an interview that Bin Shatwan gave to Petroleum Argus in June 2005. On this occasion the then Libyan energy minister seemed to express some frustration at the slowness of political approval for more sophisticated hydrocarbon legislation allowing for a variety of agreements with foreign companies (concessions, service agreements with and without risk, joint ventures and Exploration & Production Sharing Agreements EPSAs). It also appears that there was disagreement with the cabinet regarding what to do with ongoing negotiations with certain international oil companies in view of the adoption of an open bidding policy to replace the previous practice of open negotiations.

It is understood that Bin Shatwan favoured a clean break with the past, and the immediate termination of any ongoing direct negotiations, a position for which there seems to have been little enthusiasm in the cabinet. The picture is further complicated by NOC's preference for major oil companies whose capabilities were badly needed to find more oil and gas, and to boost Libya's production capacities as fast as possible; open bidding resulted in some smaller companies outbidding the majors. The situation became untenable when Shukri Ghanem himself was replaced as prime minister by Baghdadi Mahmudi (currently in office but whose movements are understood to be restricted) and assigned the chairmanship of NOC. Ghanem, too, is understood to still be in office but confined to the Azizia compound in Tripoli.

The above suggests that Omar Fathi Bin Shatwan has in depth knowledge of the intricacies of Libya's top political and administrative echelons, even though he may have been out of the fray since 2007. In view of the considerable reconstruction efforts that are likely to follow the resolution of the present conflict, and – more importantly – the even  greater effort needed to make up for Libya's economic decline and missed development opportunities, and to redress the unbalanced internal regional distribution of investment in infrastructure, it is not unlikely that we will hear more about him in the – hopefully – not too distant future.

[Read more about Shukri Ghanem and al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmudi in Watching Libya March 2, 2011 below and Watching Libya April 1, 2011 below.]