Libya continues to attract investment to its upstream sector despite tougher terms By Tom Nicholls The pace of upstream licensing in Libya is picking up: this month, Tripoli has agreed new deals with US companies Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), and Austria’s OMV. Last month, Italy’s Eni signed up to a new, a wide-ranging energy investment programme. And, in the summer, BP returned to Libya after a 33-year absence in what chief executive Tony Hayward described as “BP’s single biggest exploration commitment”. Exxon Mobil has signed a heads of agreement for an exploration and production sharing agreement (Epsa) with Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC), the state-owned oil company. The agreement covers four deep-water blocks in the Sirte Basin. Virtually unexplored, the offshore Sirte area is thought to be on-trend with the onshore Sirte basin – the country’s most productive basin, which has produced over 20 billion barrels of oil equivalent so far. The US supermajor describes the acreage as “one of the most prospective unlicensed areas in the Libyan offshore” and will undertake a five-year work programme.