Libya's Largest Working Refinery Hit by a Third Drone Strike in Four Days

A drone attack set fire to a fuel tank at the Zawiya refinery west of Tripoli, and Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) has warned that it may halt operations at the plant entirely if the strikes do not stop. Zawiya has capacity of 120,000 barrels a day and is Libya's largest operating refinery, with the Ras Lanuf facility already out of service.

The attacks have come in quick succession. A drone struck an untreated naphtha tank early on Saturday, opening two holes and releasing product into the facility. On Monday, a tank holding roughly 4.5 million litres of gasoline caught fire and collapsed, producing the blaze visible across the plant. A third drone strike on Tuesday hit near an oil blending and filling facility operated by the Zawiya Oil Refining Company, close to a main tank and pipeline network, with no casualties reported.

The NOC has said it could declare force majeure, the contractual clause that releases a supplier from delivery obligations when events are outside its control. Al-Monitor reported the corporation's warning that a full shutdown is still possible. Libyan authorities have not named a suspect, and no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Zawiya supplies fuel to the domestic Libyan market, so the immediate effect is internal rather than on global crude supply. But the strikes are occurring while the Strait of Hormuz is closed and refining capacity is already the tighter constraint in the global fuel supply chain. Cheap long-range drones have now been used against refining facilities in Russia, in the Gulf and in North Africa, and the cost of defending fixed energy infrastructure is rising in each of those regions.