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PETROLEUM GEOLOGY
OF LIBYA
SECOND EDITION
PETROLEUM
GEOLOGY OF
LIBYA
SECOND EDITION
Don Hallett
Daniel Clark-Lowes

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Elsevier
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 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Libya: The Four Principal Basins. 3

Fig. 1.2 Concession Map 1955–60. 6
Fig. 1.3 Number of Wildcat Exploration Wells Drilled Per Year. 7
Fig. 1.4 Oil Discoveries Per Year. 9
Fig. 1.5 Original Recoverable Oil Reserves Discovered by Year. 10
Fig. 1.6 Wildcat Exploration Wells vs Oil Discoveries Per Year. 11
Fig. 1.7 Ghadamis Basin Oil and Gas Fields. 13
Fig. 1.8 Sirt Basin Oil and Gas Fields. 14
Fig. 1.9 Oil Production by Year. 15
Fig. 1.10 Oil Price by Year. 18
Fig. 1.11 North-Western Offshore Oil and Gas Fields. 20
Fig. 1.12 Giant Oil Fields. 21
Fig. 1.13 Murzuq Basin Oil and Gas Fields. 24
Fig. 1.14 Cumulative Original Recoverable Reserves. 26
Fig. 1.15 Cumulative Original Recoverable Reserves vs Oil Production. 27
Fig. 1.16 Concessions Map, 2014. 30
Fig. 2.1 Africa, Tectonic Elements. 36
Fig. 2.2 The Rodinia Super-Continent. 37
Fig. 2.3 The Pannotia Super-Continent. 38
Fig. 2.4 The Saharan Metacraton. 39
Fig. 2.5 Basement Terranes in Libya. 41
Fig. 2.6 Gondwana in the Early Ordovician. 42
Fig. 2.7 Plate Movements in the Early Silurian. 43
Fig. 2.8 Plate Movements in the Early Devonian. 44
Fig. 2.9 Plate Movements in the Early Carboniferous. 45
Fig. 2.10 Pangaea. 46
Fig. 2.11 The Tethys Ocean. 47
Fig. 2.12 Apulia. 48
Fig. 2.13 Closure of the Tethys Ocean. 50
Fig. 2.14 Mediterranean. 51
Fig. 2.15 Summary Chart of Plate Tectonic Events. 52
Fig. 3.1 Kufrah Basin, Lithostratigraphic Chart. 57
Fig. 3.2 Kufrah Basin, Chronostratigraphic Framework. 59
Fig. 3.3 Kufrah Basin, Cambro-Ordovician Isopach Map. 60
Fig. 3.4 Kufrah Basin, Devonian Isopach Map. 63
Fig. 3.5 Murzuq Basin, Lithostratigraphic Chart. 66
Fig. 3.6 Murzuq Basin, Hasawnah Formation Isopach Map. 70
Fig. 3.7 Murzuq Basin, Mamuniyat Formation Isopach Map. 72
Fig. 3.8 Murzuq Basin, Tanzuft Formation Isopach Map. 74
Fig. 3.9 Murzuq Basin, Total Devonian Isopach Map. 77
Fig. 3.10 Murzuq Basin, Carboniferous Isopach Map. 80
Fig. 3.11 West Libya Time Stratigraphic Chart. 83
Fig. 3.12 West Libya, Schematic Chronostratigraphic Framework. 86
Fig. 3.13 Ghadamis Basin, Tanzuft Formation Isopach Map. 88
Fig. 3.14 Ghadamis Basin, Akakus Formation (Late Silurian) Isopach Map. 90
Fig. 3.15 Ghadamis Basin, Tadrart Formation (Early Devonian) Isopach Map. 91
Fig. 3.16 Ghadamis Basin, Kurrush (Ra’s Hamia) Formation (Mid-Triassic) Isopach Map. 96
Fig. 3.17 Libyan North-Western Offshore, Time Stratigraphic Summary Chart. 100
Fig. 3.18 Libyan North-Western Offshore, Schematic Chronostratigraphic Framework. 102
Fig. 3.19 Libyan North-Western Offshore, Eocene Nummulitic Trend. 103
Fig. 3.20 Libyan North-Western Offshore, Cartoon of Lower Eocene Facies. 109
Fig. 3.21 Sirt Basin Simplified Time Stratigraphic Summary Chart. 113
Fig. 3.22 Sirt Basin Schematic West–East Chronostratigraphic Cross Section. 114
Fig. 3.23 Sirt Basin Schematic South–North Chronostratigraphic Cross Section. 115
Fig. 3.24 Libya, Distribution of the Nubian Group. 116
Fig. 3.25 Eastern Sirt Basin, Depositional Model for Sarir Formation. 118

vii
viii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.26 Eastern Sirt Basin, Nubian Group Isopach Map. 120
Fig. 3.27 Eastern Sirt Basin, Distribution of the Amal and Maragh Formations. 122
Fig. 3.28 Eastern Sirt Basin, Distribution of the Taqrifat Formation. 125
Fig. 3.29 Central Sirt Basin, Wahah Formation Palaeogeography. 127
Fig. 3.30 Central Sirt Basin, Wahah Formation Cross Section, Raqubah Field. 128
Fig. 3.31 Sirt Basin, Simplified Time Stratigraphic Summary Chart of the Palaeogene. 129
Fig. 3.32 Sirt Basin, Palaeogeography of the Palaeocene Carbonates. 130
Fig. 3.33 Central Sirt Basin, Early Palaeocene Hagfah Formation Isopach Map. 131
Fig. 3.34 Central Sirt Basin, Intisar Embayment, West to East Schematic Chronostratigraphic Cross-Section. 132
Fig. 3.35 Central Sirt Basin, Intisar Embayment, Late Palaeocene Palaeogeography. 135
Fig. 3.36 Sirt Basin, Distribution of the Ypresian Formations and Facies. 137
Fig. 3.37 Eastern Sirt Bain, Jalu Formation Isopach Map and Overlying Seal. 139
Fig. 3.38 Eastern Sirt Basin, Chadra Member Palaeogeographic Map. 140
Fig. 3.39 Cyrenaica, Well Location Map. 142
Fig. 3.40 Cyrenaica, Pre-Hercynian Subcrop Map. 145
Fig. 3.41 Cyrenaica, Triassic-Jurassic Facies Map. 146
Fig. 3.42 Cyrenaica, Simplified Stratigraphic Summary Chart (Late Jurassic to Miocene). 147
Fig. 3.43 Cyrenaica, Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Palaeogeographic Map. 148
Fig. 3.44 Cyrenaica, Late Albian-Early Cenomanian Palaeogeographic Map. 149
Fig. 3.45 Cyrenaica, Cenomanian to Campanian Palaeogeographic Map. 150
Fig. 3.46 Cyrenaica, Early Eocene Palaeogeographic Map. 151
Fig. 3.47 Cyrenaica, Mid-Eocene Palaeogeographic Map. 152
Fig. 3.48 Cyrenaica, Late Eocene Palaeogeographic Map. 152
Fig. 4.1 Libya Tectonic Elements. 162
Fig. 4.2 Hercynian Unconformity Subcrop Map. 164
Fig. 4.3 Kufrah Basin, Top Basement Structure Map. 165
Fig. 4.4 Kufrah Basin W–E Cross Section. 166
Fig. 4.5 Kufrah Basin N–S Cross Section. 167
Fig. 4.6 Murzuq Basin Top Ordovician Structure Map. 172
Fig. 4.7 Murzuq Basin W–E Cross Section. 173
Fig. 4.8 Tihimboka and Qarqaf Arch Pinchout Cross Sections. 175
Fig. 4.9 Ghadamis Basin Top Tadrart/Akakus Structure Map. 177
Fig. 4.10 Ghadamis Basin N–S Cross Section. 178
Fig. 4.11 Ghadamis Basin W–E Cross Section. 179
Fig. 4.12 Nafusah Arch–Jifarah Terrace S–N Cross Section. 181
Fig. 4.13 Sirt Basin Top Cretaceous Regional Structure Map. 182
Fig. 4.14 Sirt Basin W–E Regional Cross Section. 184
Fig. 4.15 Zallah Trough Top Zahrah Formation (Thanetian) Structure Map. 186
Fig. 4.16 Zallah Trough W–E Cross Section. 187
Fig. 4.17 Abu Tumayam Trough Top Bayda Formation (Selandian) Structure Map. 189
Fig. 4.18 Abu Tumayam Trough W–E Cross Section. 190
Fig. 4.19 Zahrah–Hufrah Platform Top Zahrah Formation (Thanetian) Structure Map. 191
Fig. 4.20 Zahrah–Hufrah Platform W–E Cross Section. 192
Fig. 4.21 Bayda Platform Top Bayda Formation (Selandian) Structure Map. 193
Fig. 4.22 Bayda Platform W–E Cross Section. 194
Fig. 4.23 Maradah Trough, Jahamah Platform, Zaltan Platform Top Cretaceous Structure Map. 196
Fig. 4.24 Maradah Trough, Zaltan Platform Cross Section. 197
Fig. 4.25 Ajdabiya Trough Top Cretaceous Structure Map. 200
Fig. 4.26 Ajdabiya Trough W–E Cross Section. 201
Fig. 4.27 Eastern Embayment Top Nubian Group Structure Map. 203
Fig. 4.28 Eastern Embayment N–S Cross Section. 204
Fig. 4.29 Amal Platform, Maragh Trough Top Cretaceous Structure Map. 206
Fig. 4.30 Amal Platform, Maragh Trough SW–NE Cross Section. 207
Fig. 4.31 Cyrenaica Platform, Jabal al Akhdar Uplift Top Cretaceous Structure Map. 209
Fig. 4.32 Cyrenaica Platform and Jabal al Akhdar Uplift NW–SE Cross Section. 211
Fig. 4.33 Sabratah Basin Top Jdeir Formation (Ypresian) Structure Map. 213
Fig. 4.34 Sabratah Basin S–N Cross Section. 214
Fig. 4.35 Offshore Sirt Embayment Top Mesozoic Time Structure Map. 216
Fig. 4.36 Offshore Sirt Embayment S–N Cross Section. 217
Fig. 4.37 Offshore Ajdabiya Trough Cross Section. 218
Fig. 4.38 Libya Eastern Offshore Tectonic Elements Map. 219
Fig. 4.39 Offshore Darnah Trough Time Structure Map Top Cretaceous. 221
Fig. 4.40 Offshore Darnah Trough S–N Cross Section. 222
Fig. 5.1 Principal Geochemical Indicators. 230
Fig. 5.2 Model for Silurian Hot Shale Distribution in North Africa. 232
Fig. 5.3 Generalised Distribution of Silurian Tanzuft Shale and Hot Shale Thickness, Murzuq Basin. 233
 LIST OF FIGURES ix
Fig. 5.4 Relationship Between Silurian Graptolite Zonation and Basal Silurian Hot Shale. 235
Fig. 5.5 Distribution of Silurian Tanzuft Shale and Hot Shale Thickness, Greater Ghadamis Basin. 236
Fig. 5.6 Frasnian Source Rock, Distribution and Maturity, Greater Ghadamis Basin. 238
Fig. 5.7 Depth to Basement and Tanzuft Facies, Al Kufrah Basin. 239
Fig. 5.8 Distribution and Thickness of Effective Sirt Shale Source Rock, Sirt Basin. 241
Fig. 5.9 Sirt Shale Source Rock, Maturity and Source Kitchens, Sirt Basin. 242
Fig. 5.10 Pre-Sirt Shale Source Rocks and Source Kitchens, Sirt Basin. 243
Fig. 5.11 Oil Families of the Eastern Sirt Basin. 244
Fig. 5.12 Eocene and Pre-Eocene Source Rocks, Sabratah Basin. 247
Fig. 5.13 Source Rock Potential, Cyrenaica. 249
Fig. 6.1 Petroleum Systems of Libya (Oil). 254
Fig. 6.2 Petroleum Systems of Libya (Gas). 256
Fig. 6.3 Sirt Basin, Eastern Embayment, Middle Sarir Sandstone Play Fairway. 260
Fig. 6.4 Sirt Basin, Eastern Embayment, Upper Sarir Sandstone Distribution. 261
Fig. 6.5 Sirt Basin, Eastern Embayment, Schematic Cross Section Illustrating Lateral Charge to Sarir Sandstone Fields. 262
Fig. 6.6 Sirt Basin, Eastern Embayment, Stratigraphic Correlation of Sarir Sandstone. 263
Fig. 6.7 Sirt Basin, Eastern Embayment, Cross Section Through Raml Main Field. 266
Fig. 6.8 Sirt Basin, Maastrichtian Play Fairways. 267
Fig. 6.9 Sirt Basin, Migration Pathways From Ajdabiya Trough. 268
Fig. 6.10 Sirt Basin, Wahah Play Migration Pathways. 270
Fig. 6.11 Sirt Basin, Zaltan/Upper Sabil Limestone Play Fairway. 271
Fig. 6.12 Sirt Basin, Zaltan Platform, Schematic Cross Section Illustrating Charge to Palaeocene and Cambro-Ordovician Reservoirs. 272
Fig. 6.13 Sirt Basin, Jalu Play Fairway. 274
Fig. 6.14 Sirt Basin, Jalu Play Migration Pathways. 275
Fig. 6.15 Sirt Basin, Ajdabiya Trough, Burial Model. 276
Fig. 6.16 Sirt Basin, Zallah Trough, Migration Pathways. 278
Fig. 6.17 Sirt Basin, Zahrah-Hufrah Platform, Limit of Palaeocene Carbonate Reservoirs. 280
Fig. 6.18 Sirt Basin, Zahrah-Hufrah Platform, Migration Pathways. 281
Fig. 6.19 Murzuq and Greater Ghadamis, Late Ordovician Play Fairway. 284
Fig. 6.20 Murzuq Basin, Late Ordovician Stratigraphic Architecture. 286
Fig. 6.21 Murzuq Basin, Source Kitchens. 287
Fig. 6.22 Greater Ghadamis Basin, Akakus Play Fairway. 289
Fig. 6.23 Ghadamis Basin, Schematic Cross Section Illustrating Charge to Palaeozoic Clastic Reservoirs. 290
Fig. 6.24 Ghadamis Basin, Burial Model. 292
Fig. 6.25 Sabratah Basin, Eocene (Ypresian) Play Fairway. 295
Fig. 6.26 Sabratah Basin, Migration Pathways. 297
Fig. 6.27 Sabratah Basin, Makhbaz/Bahloul Gas Play. 298
Fig. 6.28 Offshore Sirt, Geo-Seismic Cross Section Across the Sirt Trough. 300
Fig. 6.29 Offshore Sirt, Schematic Cross Section Illustrating Potential Charge Scenarios. 302
Fig. 6.30 Offshore Sirt, Eocene (Lutetian) Play. 303
Fig. 6.31 Offshore Sirt, Eocene (Lutetian) Reservoir Depositional Model. 304
Fig. 7.1 Location of Oil and Gas Fields Described in this Chapter. 308
Fig. 7.2 Table of Oil Fields with originally recoverable reserves (ORR) Greater than 500 MMB. 308
Fig. 7.3 Table of Gas Fields with ORR Greater than 1 TCF. 309
Fig. 7.4 Sarir Field. 310
Fig. 7.5 Messlah Field. 311
Fig. 7.6 Jalu Field. 313
Fig. 7.7 Nasser Field. 315
Fig. 7.8 Awjilah-Nafurah Field. 316
Fig. 7.9 Intisar D Field. 318
Fig. 7.10 Raqubah Field. 320
Fig. 7.11 Zahrah-Hufrah Field. 321
Fig. 7.12 Sabah Field. 323
Fig. 7.13 Shararah A Field. 325
Fig. 7.14 El Feel (Elephant) Field. 326
Fig. 7.15 Al Wafaa Field. 328
Fig. 7.16 Hamra Field. 329
Fig. 7.17 Bouri Field. 330
Fig. 7.18 Bahr Essalam Field. 332
Fig. 8.1 Components of Ultimate Potential. 336
Fig. 8.2 Libyan Oilfields With Oil Originally in Place (OOIP) of Over 1 Billion Barrels. 337
Fig. 8.3 Map of Selected Areas of Remaining Exploration Potential. 338
Fig. 8.4 Methods of Estimating Yet-to-Find Reserves. 344
Fig. 8.5 Illustration of (A) Creaming Curve and (B) Parabolic Fractals. 345
Fig. 8.6 Libyan Oilfields Ranked by Remaining Recoverable Reserves. 347
 Preface to the Second Edition
When we were invited by Elsevier to produce a sec-
ond edition of Petroleum Geology of Libya, we assumed
it would be a relatively simple task. With two authors
instead of one, and with access to the extensive database
of Nubian Consulting Ltd, and with the further attrac-
tion of being able to use colour illustrations it seemed
an appealing proposition. The project turned out to be
much more onerous than we had anticipated. About
500 technical articles on the petroleum geology of Libya
have appeared in the 14 years since the first edition. An
enormous amount of new information on the Kufrah,
Murzuq, Cyrenaica and offshore areas has become avail-
able, sequence stratigraphy has transformed the way
we think about the sedimentary succession, and many
new exploration concepts have emerged. This has ren-
dered much of the first edition obsolete and has led to
a major re-write of large sections of the book. Murphy's
laws inevitably played their part, but eventually we
reached our objective of producing an updated survey
of the petroleum geology of Libya within the confines of
a single volume which we hope will help oil companies,
investment advisors, academics and others to obtain an
informed overview of the subject.
There have been some changes in the organisation of the
contents. We have opted to present stratigraphy as a sin-
gle chapter, and to rearrange the material by basin. A new
chapter has been added to describe and illustrate examples
of 15 major oil and gas fields, and the final chapter on re-
maining potential has been expanded and updated. New
material has been added on the offshore areas and on oil
and gas reserves. Where a basin extends into an adjacent
country, as with the Ghadamis Basin into Algeria and the
Sabratah Basin into Tunisia, an attempt has been made to
incorporate data on the entire basin for the sake of com-
pleteness. We have also taken the opportunity to change
from metres to feet, as the vast majority of logs and maps
in Libya are scaled in feet. The new material has led to a
considerable expansion of the bibliography.
This book could not have been written without ac-
cess to the excellent database of Nubian Consulting Ltd
and the generous financial support of ION who funded
the drafting of the illustrations. We should particularly
like to thank Jason Robinson, Phill Houghton, Paul
Bellingham and Vinton Buffenmyer of ION for their
continued support and encouragement, and a special
xi
debt of gratitude is due to our draftsman Bob Needham
whose skill and professionalism are so well displayed
throughout this book.
We also wish to thank Louisa Hutchins, Marisa
LaFleur, Tasha Frank and Punitha Govindaradjane at
Elsevier for bearing with the repeated delays and for
guiding the book through the preparation and pro-
duction stages. Amongst our colleagues at Nubian
Consulting we wish to thank Jon Basell, Pedro Martinez
Duran, Johannes Sobotzki, Simon Adams and Naveen
Anandakumar for their help in maintaining, operating
and updating the database, and to Julie Richardson and
Johannes Sobotzki for their contributions to Chapters 5
and 7, respectively. Our thanks also to David Boote, Nick
Blake, Bindra Thusu, Sebastian Luning and Mustafa
Salem for providing information and advice, and to
our present and former Libyan colleagues for valuable
technical discussions extending over many years. We
wish to thank Hassan Hassan (BP) and Robert Kohazy
(OMV) for their comments on sections of text and some
of the illustrations, and Michael McKimm and Wendy
Cawthorne at the Geological Society Library for provid-
ing extended loan facilities on a number of key publi-
cations and access to the Georef and Athens reference
systems. And finally we should like to thank our wives
Irina and Rosemary for their stoic acceptance of living
for more than two years under the shadow of ‘the book.’
There have of course been major changes in Libya
during the past 14 years, most notably the overthrow
of the Qadafi regime in 2011 and the subsequent civil
war. Not surprisingly there has been a great decline in
both exploration and production activity, yet despite
all the problems exploration and production wells are
still ­being drilled and oil and gas are being produced.
The ­lesson of history is that eventually all situations
­normalise, and with very large volumes of oil and gas
still to be extracted, and with companies waiting for the
opportunity to participate, it must be in everyone's inter-
ests that this occurs sooner rather than later.
A companion website with all figures can be found at:
http://booksite.elsevier.com/9780444635174/
Don Hallett
Daniel Clark-Lowes
February, 2016
 C H A P T E R
History of Oil and Gas Exploration
O U T L I N E
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Decade 1950–59
1.3 The Decade 1960–69
1.4 The Decade 1970–79 16
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Libya has known many masters—Phoenician,
Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Ottoman,
Italian, and Allied military control after the Second
World War. There was little organised scientific activ-
ity before the annexation of Libya by Italy in 1911, al-
though a number of expeditions, some with scientific
interests, passed through Libya in the 19th century. The
main objective of these expeditions, mostly organised
by the London-based African Association, was to ex-
plore the region southwards from Murzuq to Timbuktu,
determine the course of the Niger River and assess the
commercial potential of the area. The earliest of these ex-
peditions was undertaken by Friedrich Hornemann who
travelled with a camel caravan from Egypt into Libya
passing through the oases of Siwa and Awjilah, and then
across the Haruj al Aswad to Murzuq, and subsequently
to Tripoli. He returned to Murzuq in Aug. 1799 and was
never seen again. In 1817 a military expedition led by
the Bey of Tripoli traversed the coastal route from Tripoli
to Cyrenaica and was accompanied by an Italian doctor,
Paolo Della Cella, who wrote an account of the expedi-
tion and noted the presence of fossils in Cyrenaica. This
is the earliest known reference to geology in Libya. The
African Association's second attempt, this time start-
ing from Tripoli, was made by George Lyon and Joseph
Ritchie in 1819 but only reached Murzuq where Ritchie
Petroleum Geology of Libya
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63517-4.00001-6
1
1 1.5 The Decade 1980–89 21
4 1.6 The Decade 1990–99 25
8 1.7 The Decade 2000–09 27
1.8 The Period 2010–15 31
died of fever. In 1822 a better equipped but poorly led
expedition set out under the joint leadership of Dixon
Denham, an army lieutenant and Hugh Clapperton a na-
val lieutenant, accompanied by a naval surgeon, Walter
Oudney. The expedition reached Lake Chad, but Oudney
died and Denham returned to England. Clapperton con-
tinued but was halted just 5 days march from the Niger
by a local sheikh. Most tragic of all was the expedition of
Gordon Laing in 1826. He became the first European to
reach Timbuktu, but was murdered by his Tuareg guides
as he returned through what is now Mali.1
The first expedition with any pretensions of scientific
enquiry was conducted by Dr Heinrich Barth who joined
James Richardson's expedition in 1850, accompanied by
geologist and astronomer Dr Adolf Overweg. The ex-
pedition crossed the Gharyan hills and the Hamadah al
Hamra and Overweg collected fossils between Murzuq
and Ghat which were later identified by Heinrich Beyrich
as Carboniferous, the first record of Carboniferous rocks
in North Africa. Richardson and Overweg both died
on the expedition, but Barth explored the area between
Murzuq, Lake Chad and Timbuktu, publishing a de-
tailed account of his travels in 1857/58. Other explorers
continued to explore the area into the 1860s and 1870s.
At a time when borders were nonexistent French geol-
ogists, working in eastern Algeria in the 1880s, identi-
fied Devonian rocks in the Jabal Akakus and Cretaceous
rocks on the Hamadah al Hamra. Both of these areas are
1 Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
now in Libya. Finally, after an Italian expedition in 1881
the Ottoman authorities discouraged further explora-
tion, and the European powers turned their attention to
other areas.2
In 1908 J.W. Gregory, professor of Geology at Glasgow
University, led an expedition to Cyrenaica under the
auspices of the Jewish Territorial Organization to deter-
mine whether Cyrenaica would be suitable as a home for
Jewish refugees recently displaced from eastern Europe.
This is not as strange as it may first appear as Jews had
a long and prominent history in Cyrenaica dating back
to Roman times. The expedition studied the geography,
geology, agriculture and water supply of the area and
Gregory published an account of the geology in 1911
which described and named seven Tertiary formations,
some of which are still in use today. The plan for a Jewish
settlement in Cyrenaica however was abandoned.3
Libya was invaded by the Italians at the beginning of
the Italian–Turkish war of 1911. The Italians expected to
be regarded as liberators by the Libyans, but this was a
grave miscalculation, which led to 20 years of almost in-
cessant warfare. The Italian hold on Libya was tenuous
until 1922 when Mussolini's Fascists seized control in
Italy. They then embarked on La Riconquista of Libya un-
der generals Volpi and Graziani, which developed into
a protracted guerrilla war from 1922 to 1932, a war de-
scribed as ‘long, petty and spiteful’. The western part of
Libya was gradually subdued, but Murzuq, the capital
of Fezzan, was not conquered until 1930. In Cyrenaica,
the Libyans, led by Omar Mukhtar, a local Sanussi
sheikh, put up tougher resistance, but in 1930 Graziani
was appointed Vice-Governor of Cyrenaica. Using the
brutal methods for which he was well-known, he confis-
cated estates, exiled leaders, poisoned wells and erected
a 200 km barbed wire fence along the border with Egypt.
Nomads and their flocks were herded into concentration
camps, one of which was located at Marsa al Brayqah
where the future Esso port and terminal were to be built.
With superior manpower and equipment Libyan resis-
tance was finally crushed. Omar Mukhtar was captured
in Sep. 1931 and after a summary trial he was hanged at
Soluq.4
With the Italians now in full control they set about
establishing the so-called Fourth Shore. Confiscated es-
tates and ownerless land was appropriated and sold off
cheaply. Mussolini encouraged Italian peasants and the
unemployed to acquire land, but the hot, dry climate
made farming difficult and the economic crisis of the
early 1930s made progress painfully slow. In 1937 there
were only 1,300 Italian immigrant families farming in
Libya, but under the leadership of Italo Balbo, Governor-
General of Libya, a further 20,000 immigrants were
shipped to Libya in Dec. 1938 to occupy farms prepared
for them in advance by the Fascist authorities.5 Balbo
suffered the unusual fate of being killed by friendly fire
whilst flying over Tubruq in 1940 when his plane was
shot down by Italian antiaircraft guns.
In these circumstances it is surprising that Italian ge-
ologists made any notable progress in examining and
documenting the geology of Libya, but the first rudi-
mentary geological map of the accessible parts of Libya
was published in 1913 at a scale of 1:6,000,000,6 and a
number of papers were published on practical aspects
such as water supply, minerals and building material
in the period up to the First World War. In the 1920s a
second generation of Italian geologists led by Ardito
Desio produced reports on some of the more remote
regions of Libya. Desio was a charismatic figure: geol-
ogist, cartographer, explorer and mountaineer. In 1926
he led a geological expedition to the Al Jaghbub oasis
on the border with Egypt, and in 1931 he undertook a
more ambitious expedition by camel caravan across the
Sahara to the border of Sudan, followed by an expedi-
tion to the Tibisti mountains in 1935. He became director
of the Libyan Geological Service from 1936 to 1940 when
he reported on deep aquifers, which did much to stimu-
late agriculture, and on surface oil seeps which led to the
birth of the Libyan oil industry.7 During his long career
he published over 120 papers on the geology of Libya
during the period 1927–75.8 Traces of methane were re-
ported in a water well drilled near Tripoli in 19149 and
subsequently gas was noticed in several wells drilled
on the coastal plain and on the Jabal Nafusah. In 1926
Crema found traces of oil in a well at Sidi al Masri in the
suburbs of Tripoli.10 Under Desio's leadership Agip was
persuaded to conduct a 2-year reconnaissance campaign
and to drill a 5,000 ft exploration well near Tripoli, which
proved to be dry, but it was during this period that Desio
predicted that the Sirt Basin would be a favourable area
for hydrocarbon generation and accumulation (Fig. 1.1).
Further reconnaissance work in 1940 was cut short by
the outbreak of war.11
The Italian geological investigations were ended by
the Second World War which had a devastating im-
pact on Libya. Three times the fighting surged across
Cyrenaica. Towns like Darnah and Tubruq were de-
stroyed, and Binghazi was left in ruins. Most Italian
settlers returned to Italy during the early stages of the
war, and the countryside was left deserted. The allies
finally drove the axis forces westwards and Tripoli sur-
rendered in Jan. 1943 and the rest of Libya was cleared
by February. Large areas, particularly in the coastal
plain west of Ajdabiya were heavily mined, and some
of these mines were not removed until the 1970s and
1980s, ironically mostly by German contractors. For a
number of years the salvaging of abandoned war ma-
terial provided a lucrative source of income to scrap
metal dealers. From 1943 Libya was under the control of
British and French military authorities, and the United
States was granted the use of the former Libyan Grand
 1.1 Introduction 3
34°

Mediterranean Sea
33°
Tripoli Darnah
Tunisia
Az Zawiyah Al Bayda
Misratah
Al Jabal al Akhdar Tubruq
Gharyan Binghazi 32°
Al Burdi
Gulf of Sirt
Jabal
Nafusah Sirt 31°
Az Zuwaytinah
As Sidrah Ajdabiya

Egypt
Ras Lanuf Al Brayqah Cyrenaica
Ghadamis
Platform 30°
Ghadamis
Jabal as
Basin
Sawda Hun 29°
Sirt
Basin
Al Qarqaf 28°
Arch
Al Haruj
Sabha al Aswad 27°
Awbari
Jab

26°
Murzuq
Tazirbu Jabal
al A

Zalmah
Murzuq
kak

Waw al Kabir
Ghat
Basin 25°
us

ah
ss

Waw an Namus
Qu

Algeria Al Kufrah
al

24°
r
Du

Jabal
Jabal Azbah 23°
Eghi
Jabal
Ti Al Kufrah
bi Arknu
st Basin
Niger i 22°
Jabal
Legend Awaynat

Recent volcanic terrains

Chad 21°
Principal sedimentary basins
Areas of thin sedimentary cover
20°
Palaeozoic and basement outcrops 0 100 200 300 km

10° 11° 12° 13° 14° 15° 16° 17° 18° 19° 20° 21° 22° 23° 24° 25°
Source: Geological map of Libya (1985)
FIG. 1.1 Libya: The Four Principal Basins.
The Sirt Basin is Mesozoic and Tertiary in age, whereas the Ghadamis, Murzuq and Kufrah basins are Palaeozoic, with variable post-Palaeozoic
cover. The volcanic rocks are Neogene to recent in age.

Prix racing circuit at Mellaha for use as an airfield. This
became the Wheelus Field. However, as John Wright
perceptively wrote in 1969 ‘Colonels do not necessarily
make the best rulers’. The allies all had hidden agen-
das. In Fezzan the French administered Ghat as part of
southern Algeria, and Ghadamis as part of Tunisia, and
the British regarded Libya as a strategically important
base in the Mediterranean. Wheelus Field provided a
supplementary base from which the United States was
able to monitor events in the Middle East and southern
Europe. In short, the allies were reluctant to leave Libya.
Italy was formally stripped of its African empire in Feb.
1947, but it still came as something of a shock when the
United Nations voted to grant independence to Libya in
4 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
Nov. 1949. After 2 years of n
­ egotiation, in which Sayyed
Idris, the Emir of Cyrenaica, who had negotiated with
the Italians in the 1920s but had spent the years 1922–43
in exile, was nominated as king-elect. Libya became an
independent federal kingdom on 24 Dec. 1951.12
LI BYA N N AMES
The transliteration of Arabic names to Latin script is
never easy. As far as possible in this book, geographical
names have been represented as shown in the National
Atlas of Libya published in 1978, supplemented by names
derived from other Libyan sources such as the Geological
Map of Libya and publications of the Earth Science Society of
Libya. Stratigraphic names are much more complex as they
are governed by the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature,
a cardinal principal of which is that a stratigraphic name
and its spelling once correctly established should not be
changed. This leads to endless confusion in Libya as most
stratigraphic names are based on geographic names, and
geographic names and spelling have frequently been rad-
ically changed. The dilemma then arises should the origi-
nal stratigraphic name, for example, Gialo Formation, be
retained when the geographic location is now called Jalu?
The answer strictly should be yes, but Libyan publications,
most notably the symposium volumes on the Sedimentary
Basins of Libya have almost exclusively adopted the prag-
matic approach of altering stratigraphic names to match
the geographic names which, strictly speaking, contra-
venes the rules of stratigraphic nomenclature. In this book
we follow the current Libyan practice of using identical
versions for both geographic and stratigraphic names.
1.2 THE DECADE 1950–59
The fledgling kingdom did not have a smooth start, as
King Idris was dependent on the support of the British
military to maintain his authority. In 1955 he moved
permanently from Binghazi to the British garrison town
of Tubruq.13 Wheelus air base was leased to the United
States for 15 years from 1954, but the French, who had
become embroiled in a war against the Arabs in Algeria,
were forced to relinquish their administration in Fezzan
by the end of 1956.
In 1953 the Libyan government enacted a Minerals Law
which permitted the allocation of preliminary prospecting
permits to foreign oil companies. Eleven major interna-
tional companies obtained permits including Esso, Shell,
BP and CFP. Drilling operations were not permitted, and
the areas awarded for prospecting were not exclusive.14 In
Jun. 1955 the first Libyan Petroleum Law was published.
The law declared that all sub-­surface minerals were state
property, and established the rules under which conces-
sions could be awarded. The country was divided into
four petroleum zones with each zone carrying different
rental charges and work commitments. The law was de-
liberately drafted to be attractive to foreign oil companies,
but it contained two serious flaws which were to have se-
rious repercussions later. Royalities were defined as being
payable on the value of crude oil ‘on the field’, and were
allowable as a tax credit, and secondly, the law provided
specific protection against retrospective legislation being
applied to a concession agreement without the consent of
both parties. There was no reference anywhere in the law
to posted price.15 The areas which appeared most favour-
able to the oil companies in 1955 as a result of the recon-
naissance programmes, were northern Cyrenaica where
major structures had been observed, and adjacent to the
Algerian border where exploration by French companies
in the Illizi Basin was very active. The first two conces-
sions, awarded in Nov. 1955, were in these areas: con-
cession 1 was awarded to Esso Standard adjacent to the
Algerian border, and concession 2 to Nelson Bunker Hunt
in northern Cyrenaica. In December a French consortium
operating in Algeria discovered the large Edjeleh field on
the very boundary of the Esso concession. Forty-five more
concessions were awarded in Dec. 1955 and Jan. 1956, and
a further 48 concessions were awarded in the period up
Apr. 1961, after which no further licences were issued un-
der the 1955 law.16
L I B YA N CO NCE S S I O N
NO M E NCL ATURE
Several different types of concession have been issued
over the years:
1. Concessions granted under the 1955 Petroleum Law
from 1955 to 1961 were numbered 1–95.
2. Concessions granted under the 1965 Petroleum Law in
1966 were numbered 96–137.
3. Joint Venture concessions granted from 1968 to 1973
were numbered LP1–LP31.
4. New concessions were introduced in 1974. These
conformed to EPSA I regulations and were granted
from 1974 to 1979. They were numbered NC1–NC97.
5. EPSA II concessions were granted from 1980 to 1988
and were numbered NC98–NC152.
6. EPSA III concessions were granted from 1989 to 2005
and were numbered NC153–NC216.
7. In 2005 the concession awards system was changed
to one of competitive bidding, and at the same time
the concession numbering system was changed. The
new concessions were based initially on 1-degree
latitude and longitude quadrangles. EPSA IV Round
1 concessions were granted in Mar. 2005 when 15
concessions were awarded.
 1.2 The Decade 1950–59
8. For EPSA IV Round 2 the 1-degree quadrangles were
divided into quarter blocks, so that a concession might
carry the number 102/4. Forty of these quarter blocks
were awarded in Dec. 2005.
9. EPSA IV Round 3 concessions were granted in Dec.
2006 and Jan. 2007, when 29 quarter blocks were
awarded.
10. EPSA IV Round 4 concessions were granted in 2008
when 19 quarter blocks were awarded.
Examples of all these types of concession are still current
today. There have also been several out-of-round awards
such as those to BP in 2007 and to ExxonMobil in 2008.
As a result of these awards 70% of the land area of
Libya was licensed, including all but the most unpro-
spective or inhospitable areas. In west Libya the entire
Ghadamis and Murzuq Basins were licensed, and all
of Cyrenaica and the Sirt Basin were covered by con-
cessions (Fig. 1.2). Even at this early date some of the
concessions were offshore, mostly in the Gulf of Sirt, but
also off the coast of Cyrenaica. The principal companies
which were granted concessions were Esso, Mobil, Oasis
(a consortium formed by Amerada, Continental and
Marathon), Amoseas (a consortium of Texaco and Socal),
Gulf, BP, Shell, and CFP. Among smaller American com-
panies were Libyan American (a subsidiary of Texas
Gulf), Nelson Bunker Hunt and W.R. Grace. Smaller
European companies were represented by Deutsche
Erdoel, Wintershall, Elwerath, CORI, Ausonia Mineraria
and SNPA. It could be fairly claimed that the Libyan
government had achieved its objective of a diverse port-
folio of licence holders with no one company holding a
dominant position.17
The first wildcats to be drilled in Libya under the new
Petroleum Law were located mostly on structures iden-
tified by surface mapping. Libyan American spudded
well A1-18 in Apr. 1956, only 4 months after the licence
was granted.18 The well tested a large anticlinal structure
in northern Cyrenaica but proved to be dry. In 1957 four
companies were involved in drilling campaigns. Libyan
American drilled two more dry holes on concession 18, and
BP drilled a dry hole in the area near Tripoli investigated by
Agip before the war. Esso began operations in concession 1
close to the recent French discoveries in Algeria. Their sec-
ond well, at Atshan, made a gas discovery which, on ap-
praisal, turned out to be a significant find containing both
oil and gas in multiple reservoirs. Mobil drilled the first
well in the Sirt Basin, A1-57, which was drilled primarily
to evaluate the Tertiary section on the Az Zahrah Platform,
but found no trace of hydrocarbons.19
In May 1958 BP carried out an aerial reconnaissance
of concession 81, deep in the Great Sand Sea of eastern
5
Libya, where they came across the wreckage of a US
Liberator bomber. Subsequent investigation showed
that the plane, named Lady Be Good, had disappeared in
Apr. 1943 following a bombing raid on Naples. Most of
the crew survived the crash landing and attempted to
walk across the desert to their base near Binghazi. None
of them survived, but they left a record of their doomed
attempt which was found when seismic crews visited
the area in Feb. 1959.20
Drilling began in earnest in 1958. Twenty-seven wild-
cat wells were spudded and the first major discoveries
were made. In west Libya Esso continued to evaluate
concession 1 with six further wells, several of which had
gas shows, and Shell began evaluating the area north of
concession 1. Gulf drilled three dry holes in concession
67 on the edge of the Murzuq sand sea, and tested oil in
well A1-68 in an area where major discoveries were to
be made in later years. CFP made a small oil discovery
in Devonian sandstones at Tahara in concession 49, and
Shell made the first discovery in the northern Ghadamis
Basin at Tlakshin in the Akakus reservoir of late Silurian
age. Further east BP drilled two wells in the area between
west Libya and the Sirt Basin without success.21
L I CE NCE S I S S UE D UND E R THE 1 9 5 5
P E TRO L E UM L AW, 1 9 5 5 – 6 1
Terms: variable rental charges and work commitments,
12.5% royalties, taxes and staged relinquishments.
Concessions numbered 1–95.
Most significant awards: Esso: concessions 6, 17, 20,
Mobil: concessions 11, 12, 13, Oasis: concessions 32, 59, 71,
Amoseas: concessions 47, 51, BP: concessions 65, 80, Gulf:
concession 66.
Wildcat wells drilled on concessions 1–95 (1958–
2014): 1221.
Principal discoveries on concessions 1–95: Ghani,
Zahrah-Hufrah, Bahi, Mabruq, Raqubah, Zaltan (Nasser),
Wahah, Dayfah, Amal, Nafurah, Jalu, Sarir, Messlah.
Drilling continued in the Sirt Basin and in Apr. 1958
the A1-32 well of Oasis discovered oil in the small North
Bahi structure on the western margin of the Az Zahrah
Platform. This was followed in September by a much
larger discovery in the B1-32 well which Oasis named
the Az Zahrah (Dahra) field. On the adjacent block Mobil
drilled the A1-11 well which encountered good shows
in the same reservoir interval, and which on appraisal,
proved another major discovery, which Mobil named
the Al Hufrah (Hofra) field. Amoseas was active on the
western flank of the Sirt Basin, but without success. Esso
began operations in the central Sirt Basin and reported
a small discovery in Eocene carbonates in concession 5.
6 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

34°

Mediterranean Sea
33°
9 54
Tunisia 53 28 55
2745 36 29
38
23
42 15 18 56 32°
34
83 7 2 19
61 86 89 35
8
70 41 14 31°
39 87 46
30 4 33
43 10

Egypt
24 88
26 60 ZONE I 25
32 16 5 31 ZONE II 30°

40 6
17
66 69 12 51
3 44 20 82 29°
11 13
49
52 63 84
47
62 57
59 80 28°
78
48
1 75
50
65
27°
72
68 81
71
21
67 73 22 77
85 26°

58
67pt ZONE IV ZONE
E III
67pt 64 74 25°

Algeria 76
24°

23°

Niger 22°

Chad
21°

0 100 200 300 km 20°

10° 11° 12° 13° 14° 15° 16° 17° 18° 19° 20° 21° 22° 23° 24° 25°
Source: AAPG Petroleum Developments in Africa (1961)
FIG. 1.2 Concession Map 1955–60.
The first concessions were awarded in 1955 with further awards up to 1960. By then 70% of the country had been licensed. The awards included
several offshore concessions.

The 1958 drilling programme had resulted in seven dis- thirdly, the large structures mapped in Cyrenaica had
coveries of which two were commercial (Az Zahrah and proved disappointing. Desio's prediction that the Sirt
Al Hufrah).22 Basin appeared favourable for hydrocarbons was begin-
By the end of 1958 three factors were becoming clear: ning to be borne out.
firstly, in west Libya several small oil and gas accumu- The discovery which changed the face of the Libyan
lations had been found in Palaeozoic clastic reservoirs, oil industry came in 1959 when Esso drilled their C1-6
secondly it was apparent that the major commercial oil well. The well was located on a prospect on the Zaltan
accumulations were being found in the Sirt Basin, and Platform which proved to be a Palaeocene carbonate
 1.2 The Decade 1950–59 7
complex with excellent reservoirs and a 340 ft oil col- field with their second well, with oil reservoired in base-
umn. Oil was tested at a rate of 17,500 barrels per day.23 ment quartzites and Cretaceous basal sands. Amoseas
Subsequent appraisal showed that the discovery was a had their first success in concession 47 when their sec-
giant field. In addition the field was shown to contain a ond well found the Al Bayda (Beda) field with oil in
number of subordinate oil-bearing reservoirs. The field several Palaeocene carbonate reservoirs. Esso, which
was named Zaltan, but was renamed Nasser in honour had taken over the operatorship of concession 17 from
of the President of the United Arab Republic when he Libyan American, discovered a large oil pool at Mabruq,
died in 1970. As a result of this discovery drilling activ- but the reservoir was thin and heavily faulted. In west
ity increased dramatically and, whilst some drilling con- Libya CFP in concession 23, Gulf in concession 66 and
tinued in west Libya, the focus of attention now swung Oasis in concession 26 all reported discoveries, but on a
firmly to the Sirt Basin. much smaller scale than those in the Sirt Basin.24
Other successes were announced in rapid succession. Of the 18 discoveries announced in 1959 (from a total
In 1959 Oasis, exploring in the area south of Zaltan, made of 40 exploration wildcat wells), 6 were giant commercial
two major discoveries with their first two wells in con- discoveries (Al Bayda, Zaltan, Amal, Az Zahrah East, Al
cession 59. The A1-59 well discovered the giant Wahah Wahah and Dayfah). The year 1959 can be said to mark
field in which the reservoir was a late Cretaceous near- the coming of age of the Libyan oil industry (Fig. 1.3).
shore carbonate, whilst the B1-59 well found the Dayfah Libya was rapidly becoming a significant force on the
(Defa) field, a huge Palaeocene carbonate build-up, international oil scene and the Sirt Basin was developing
with some similarities to Zaltan, and with equally good as a major new oil province, and one with a wide variety
­reservoir characteristics. Oasis also continued explora- of oil reservoirs and structural styles.
tion on the Az Zahrah Platform in concession 32 where Tripoli became a boom town as companies brought
their F1-32 well discovered the Az Zahrah East pool, in exploration and production staff. The Petroleum
which subsequently proved to be an extension of Mobil's Exploration Society of Libya was founded in 1958 and
Al Hufrah field. Mobil began evaluation of concession 12 became a major forum for the exchange of ideas, the or-
in the eastern Sirt basin and discovered the giant Amal ganisation of field excursions and the s­tandardisation

140
Wildcat exploration wells per year

120

100 C1 C2 C3

80
B1 B2 B3
60

40 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6

20

0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008

Year
A Licence awards and evaluation B Disputes
A1 Evaluation of original concessions 1–95 B1 Posted price dispute
A2 Evaluation of concessions 96–137 B2 State participation and nationalisation
A3 Evaluation of EPSA I concessions B3 International sanctions
A4 Evaluation of EPSA II concessions
A5 Evaluation of EPSA III concessions C Regimes
A6 Evaluation of EPSA IV concessions C1 King Idris regime
C2 Qadafi regime
C3 Post Qadafi regime

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.

FIG. 1.3 Number of Wildcat Exploration Wells Drilled Per Year.
The level of exploration drilling has been affected by numerous internal and external events, as shown.
8 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
of nomenclature. As early as 1956 Professor Desio
was invited by the Stratigraphic Commission of
the International Geological Congress to prepare a
Stratigraphic Lexicon for Libya. A draft was prepared,
but in an effort to include some of the more recent data,
the newly formed Petroleum Exploration Society of
Libya asked P.F. Burollet to revise and update the draft.
The Lexicon was published under the auspices of the
International Geological Congress in 1960, but with the
benefit of hindsight it was published prematurely. It was
based partly on pre-war data, some of the entries were
derived from unpublished company reports and thereby
contravened the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature, it
relied exclusively on surface data and did not include
the Sirt Basin. As a result it quickly fell into disfavour
and each operating oil company set up its own system of
stratigraphic nomenclature, which was to lead to endless
confusion in subsequent years.25
LI BYA N WELL NOMENCLATURE
The well numbering system in Libya is unique. The
concept is deceptively simple, but the reality can be very
confusing.
A well is identified by three elements: the prospect on
which it was drilled—designated by a letter, the number of
the well on that prospect—designated by a number and the
concession on which the prospect is located. A well desig-
nated A1-1 indicates that it was drilled on the A prospect,
that it is the first well on that prospect, and that it is located
on concession 1. Subsequent wells on the same prospect
would be numbered A2-1, A3-1, etc. The next prospect to be
drilled is B, then C and so on. A discovery with many wells
could carry the designation, for example, C206-6. After the
Z prospect was drilled the next prospects were AA, BB, CC,
etc., giving, for example, BB1-59. After the ZZ prospect was
drilled the next prospects are AAA, BBB, etc. On concession
59 one of the more recent wells is SSSSSS1-59 usually ab-
breviated to 6S1-59. This is the 169th prospect to be drilled
on concession 59. The letter W is reserved for water wells.
On later concessions a well designation could be for ex-
ample A1-LP4F on a joint venture concession, A1-NC29C
on an EPSA I concession and A1-120/2 on an EPSA IV con-
cession. The suffixes F, C and/2 in these examples refer to
part blocks within the concession. Replacement wells are
designated with a small letter after the original well num-
ber, for example, A1a-NC87, sidetracked wells by the des-
ignation ST, as in HH94ST-65, horizontal wells by the letter
H, as in HH96H-65, and injection wells with the letter I, as
in A79I-100.
Confusion arises where wells have similar designa-
tions such as A1-59, A1-NC59 and A1-59/4. This is made
worse by the practice, adopted in 2007 on concessions
held by ­particular operators, of abandoning the ­sequential
­ umbering system and adopting a numbering based on
n
the new quadrangular system. Thus Harouge Oil and Gas
drilled a well designated A1-89/2 on what was until 2007
concession 11, whilst concessions 89/1 and 89/3 are EPSA
IV blocks awarded to Shell. There is further scope for con-
fusion for wells drilled on a particular field on which the
licence number has changed. On the Hamra field in the
Ghadamis Basin the first five wells were designated F1-66
to F5-66, the next wells on the field were designated F6-
LP10B to F11-LP10B and the most recent wells on the field
are designated F12-NC8 to F29-NC8. Even more confus-
ingly on the Tlakshin field the first four wells were A1-70 to
A4-70, and the next seven wells, not A5-NC4 to A11-NC4,
but A1-NC4 to A7-NC4.
1.3 THE DECADE 1960–69
Exploration drilling continued on an upward trend
throughout 1960 with 67 exploration wells being drilled
(Fig. 1.3). In the Sirt Basin Amoseas continued explor-
ing concession 47 and discovered the medium-sized
Al Kotlah field, BP commenced operations in conces-
sions 65 and 80 in the south-eastern part of the basin,
and Esso continued work in the central Sirt Basin. Their
H1-6 well found a gas field which was named Mn Berber
(subsequently renamed Assumud), and in concession 20
Esso discovered another giant oilfield at Ar Raqubah
(Raguba), with oil present in late Cretaceous calcaren-
ites. Shell began exploration in concession 41 and made
a significant discovery at Antlat near Binghazi, but in
poor quality Eocene carbonates.26 The tally for 1960 was
14 oil discoveries of which two were commercial (Ar
Raqubah and Al Kotlah), and 3 gas discoveries one of
which (Assumud) was developed at a later date.
In 1961 BP's third well on concession 65 discovered the
giant As Sarir field, and in so doing opened up the whole
of the south-east Sirt Basin.27 Oasis made an equally spec-
tacular discovery at Jalu in the eastern Sirt Basin with mul-
tiple oil-bearing reservoirs of Eocene and Oligocene age.
Oasis had further successes in concession 59 at Samah,
Masrab, Harash, Zaqqut, and Khalifah, and after years
of unsuccessful appraisal of the A1-32 discovery they fi-
nally discovered the Bahi field in 1968. Esso had a small
discovery at Al Meghil in concession 6 and Elwerath,
one of the small German independents, reported the first
indication of oil in the Zallah Trough which was subse-
quently to become a major producing area.28
Companies which had made commercial discoveries
rapidly set about developing them (Fig. 1.4). Develop­
ment wells were drilled and pipelines and pumping
stations were installed. Esso laid a 169 km 36-in. pipe-
line from Zaltan to Al Brayqah where they e­ stablished a
port and export facility on the site of the former Italian
 1.3 The Decade 1960–69 9
25

20

Oil discoveries per year

A1 A2 A3

15
B1 B2 B3

10

0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Year
Key factors
A1 Major discoveries mostly in Sirt Basin on 1956–60
concessions
A2 Significant discoveries in Ghadamis and Murzuq basins
on EPSA II concessions
A3 Significant discoveries in Murzuq Basin on EPSA III
concessions
B1 Low level of activity due to state participation and
nationalisation
B2 Low level of activity due to international sanctions
B3 Low level of activity following 2011 revolution

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.

FIG. 1.4 Oil Discoveries Per Year.
Significant discoveries made by year. About 450 oil discoveries have been made in Libya in the period 1958–2014. Of these, 165 have been devel-
oped and brought on stream and a further 185 have recoverable reserves of more than 10 million barrels.

concentration camp, and the first cargo of crude oil from
Libya was shipped in Sep. 1961, just 27 months after the
first test at Zaltan. Oasis established a similar facility at
As Sidrah, and Mobil/Amoseas at Ra's Lanuf. By the
end of 1961 10 giant fields had been discovered, over
200 development wells had been drilled, and Libya had
­become an oil exporter.29
In 1960 the first relinquishments took place under
the terms of the 1955 law which required 25% surren-
der within 5 years. In 1961 six of the surrendered blocks
were reassigned to Phillips and Pan American. No fur-
ther concessions were awarded for the next 5 years. The
reaction of the government to the discovery of major oil
accumulations was to question the liberal terms which
had been offered to companies before any oil had been
discovered. The government felt that the 1955 law re-
quired revision in order to secure the national interest
and bring the law more into line with practices in the
Middle East. Amendments were published in 1961 after
lengthy discussions with the operators. They attempted
to modify the way in which profits were taxed by es-
tablishing posted price as the basis for calculating tax
charges. The government was anxious to obtain the
approval of the operating companies since the original
Petroleum Law specified that changes could only be im-
plemented by mutual consent. The companies finally
agreed to these proposals but only after extracting ma-
jor concessions from the government which effectively
nullified the government's gains.30 In the next 4 years,
during which production rapidly increased, companies
calculated their tax liability on the basis of posted price.
The posted price was established by the companies on
the free market price of actual cargoes shipped from
Libyan ports. Under the new agreements they were then
permitted to deduct expenses and rebates which had the
effect of substantially reducing the government's taxa-
tion income. At a time of falling oil prices it was felt that
several operators in Libya were taking unfair advantage
of the posted price and rebate system.31
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) was established in 1960 to protect the interests of
petroleum exporting countries and Libya became a mem-
ber in 1962. OPEC was at that time concerned to establish
a standard level of royalties and to ensure that royal-
ties could not be offset against taxes, as was the case in
Libya. In 1964 the international majors agreed to OPEC's
10 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

­ roposals in return for a temporary reduction in the level

p There is little evidence that the posted price dispute
of posted price. In Libya however the operators were di-
vided. The majors were in favour of the OPEC propos-
als, subject to certain concessions, but the independents
were not. In 1965, following a meeting of OPEC minis-
ters in Tripoli, the Ministry of Petroleum Affairs set up a
committee to look into the possibility of introducing the
OPEC formula on royalties to all operators in Libya. The
committee recommended implementation of the OPEC
proposals, and a new Petroleum Law was promulgated
by the Libyan Parliament in Dec. 1965. The new law in-
corporated both the principle that royalties could not be
used as credits against tax, and that expenses and rebates
on the posted price were limited to the amounts set out
in the OPEC formula. In return the government agreed
to write-off all disputed tax discounts and rebates for the
period up to the end of 1964.32 Companies were given a
deadline within which to accept the new law. Several of
the independents resisted, but under threat of sanctions
from OPEC they eventually acquiesced. The Petroleum
Law of 1965 took immediate affect and applied to all con-
cession holders. The new law removed the worst of the
tax-avoidance abuses which had been possible under the
old law and brought Libya more closely into line with her
Middle Eastern neighbours.
had any significant impact on drilling activity. Libya
still represented a highly profitable environment in
which the oil was of excellent quality with low sul-
phur content, and transportation was not dependent
on long tanker voyages or transit through the Suez
Canal. Exploration activity developed rapidly follow-
ing the major discoveries in 1959–61. Wildcat drilling
peaked in 1963 with 133 exploration wells totalling
over 1 million feet of exploration footage (Fig. 1.4).
This marked the culmination of drilling activity on the
original concessions. Thereafter the annual total de-
clined steadily as more effort was diverted into devel-
opment drilling and as acreage relinquishments began
to reduce the area available for exploration. The fact
that no new concessions were awarded between 1961
and 1966 during the posted-price dispute was also a
­contributory factor.33
The early pace of oil exploration in Libya was phe-
nomenal. Ten billion barrels of reserves were discov-
ered in the first 3 years, and a further 10 billion barrels
within the next 2 years (Fig. 1.5). By 1962 most of
the major producing reservoirs in the Sirt Basin had
been ­ discovered, the Eocene and Oligocene at Jalu,
the Palaeocene at Zaltan, Dayfah, and Al Bayda, the

7,000
Original recoverable reserves discovered

6,000

5,000
per year (MMbbl/year)

4,000

3,000

2,000 2 4
7
3
1,000 5
6 8

0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008

Year
Key factors
1 Major discoveries of the decade 1958–67
2 Messlah
3 Bouri
4 Shararah A and B
5 As Sarah
6 El Feel
7 6J-59
8 NC 186 discoveries

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.

FIG. 1.5 Original Recoverable Oil Reserves Discovered by Year.
Seventy percent of Libyan original recoverable reserves were discovered in the first decade of exploration. Since then several new areas, like the
Murzuq Basin and the north-western offshore, have been found to contain significant hydrocarbons and several other areas are only lightly ex-
plored. This chart does not include oil recoverable by advanced EOR methods.
 1.3 The Decade 1960–69
Cretaceous at Al Wahah and Ar Raqubah, the Nubian
at As Sarir, the basal Cretaceous and basement at Amal.
The next phase, from 1962 to 1965, was one of consoli-
dation in which the skills and expertise gained during
the initial exploration phase were applied to finding
more oil accumulations of the same type. Companies
were also anxious to fully evaluate their acreage before
the statutory relinquishments required under the terms
of the original licences.
L I BYAN FI E LD NAMES
There is no consistency about the naming of oil and gas
fields in Libya. Initial discoveries are usually identified by
the designation of the discovery well, as in the J-13 oil dis-
covery found by well J1-13. Sometimes however they are
named after the prospect, as in Tmad, a small oil discov-
ery found by well BB1-13. Commercial discoveries are fre-
quently given names, for example, Jabal, a large discovery
made by well P1-6. Others are not, as in the case of A-NC
186. Field names have often been changed: Zaltan became
Nasser, Ora became Tibisti, Idris became Intisar, Mn Berber
became Assumud, Elephant became El Feel. In some cases
fields extend across concession boundaries and were
given different names by the different operators. Thus Dur
Maradah, named by Mobil on concession 13, was found to
be part of the Lahib field named by Esso on concession 6.
Awjilah was named by Occidental on concession 102 but
was later found to be part of the Nafurah field named by
Amoseas on concession 51. These fields have all been uni-
tised, but the dual names remain.
11
During the period from 1962 to the end of 1965 448
exploration wells were drilled, mostly in the Sirt Basin,
although significant efforts still continued in west Libya.
In the western Sirt basin Elwerath made a second dis-
covery in the Zallah Trough (F1-78), and on the Zahrah-
Hufrah Platform Mobil had four small discoveries in
concession 11 (Abu Maras, Facha, Adh Dhi'b and Furud).
Pan American and Phillips, two of the companies which
were awarded relinquished acreage in 1961, reported
small finds at Umm al Furud, Kuf and E-92 on acreage
which had been relinquished by Mobil. Further south on
the Bayda Platform Amoseas discovered the Kotlah, and
Haram pools, and Mobil found the multi-reservoir Awra
(Ora) field (later renamed Tibisti). Esso's efforts concen-
trated on concession 6 where further important oil dis-
coveries were made at Jabal, Lahib and Ralah, and gas at
Hutaybah and Sahel. In the eastern Sirt Basin Amoseas
had a major success with their G1-51 well which found
the giant Nafurah field, with reserves in multiple reser-
voirs, and Mobil made further discoveries in the Amal
area (Rakb, Amal E and Amal N). Oasis continued work,
particularly in concession 59, and reported discoveries at
Bilhizan, Kalanshiyu, and in well YY1-59. BP continued
exploring the Nubian province in concessions 65 and 80,
and discovered another major pool at Sarir L. The Italian
company CORI had their first success in concession 82
when they discovered a deep Nubian reservoir in their
R1-82 well. This well was drilled in the Hameimat Trough
and is significant in indicating that oil is still preserved
even at depths greater than 13,750 ft. These discoveries
brought the total number of commercial fields by the end
of 1966 to 36 (Fig. 1.6).34

140
Wildcat exploration wells/oil discoveries per year

120

100

80

60

40
Wildcat wells

20

Oil discoveries
0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008

Year
Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.
FIG. 1.6 Wildcat Exploration Wells vs Oil Discoveries Per Year.
The correlation between the number of wildcat exploration wells drilled per year and the number of discoveries is striking. About one exploration
well in four has found some trace of hydrocarbon, and 1 in 10 has found sufficient hydrocarbons to justify development.
12 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
In west Libya Gulf, CFP and Oasis reported a string
of small discoveries in the Ghadamis Basin in Palaeozoic
clastic reservoirs, and the government tried to persuade
Gulf to develop its discoveries on concession 66. Gulf
however regarded them as sub-commercial and was un-
willing to fund the development costs, despite the fact that
collectively a considerable amount of oil had been dis-
covered, and it was not until the 1980s that a pipeline was
eventually constructed to tap these reserves (Fig. 1.7).35
Offshore drilling began in the Gulf of Sirt with Libyan
Atlantic spudding their first well in 1963. Thirteen off-
shore wells were drilled during the following 5 years. No
major discoveries were made but small gas shows were
reported in two wells offshore from Brayqah.36
Development drilling reached a peak in 1964, and
fields were progressively brought on stream: Zaltan
in 1961, Zahrah in 1962, Hufrah, Raqubah, Samah and
Wahah in 1963, Jalu, Dayfah, Bayda and Kotlah in 1964,
and Awra, Jabal, Meghil, Furud, Umm al Furud and
Ralah in 1965. The pipeline systems were extended to
link these fields to the respective marine terminals, and
by the end of 1965 production had reached 1.22 million
barrels per day, 95% of which was exported.37 Companies
which chose not to build their own pipeline and ex-
port facilities were obliged to make arrangements with
other operators who had spare capacity, as in the case
of Amoseas which made an arrangement to use Mobil's
facilities.38
Most of the discoveries made to this date were oil ac-
cumulations with varying quantities of associated gas.
There was no ready market for gas, particularly from
the more distant fields, and for the most part the asso-
ciated gas was flared. However in the northern part of
Esso's concession 6 several nonassociated gas fields had
been discovered which, with the gas from Zaltan and Ar
Raqubah, had the potential to produce large volumes of
gas. In 1964 Algeria started selling liquefied natural gas
to Europe, and Esso decided to follow Algeria's example.
An LNG plant was constructed at Brayqah at a cost of
$300 million and the first shipment was exported in spe-
cially built LNG tankers in Jan. 1969.39 The Al Brayqah
facility was further expanded by the addition of a small
oil refinery which came on stream in 1966, the purpose of
which was to supply cheap refined products for Libya's
small domestic market.40
In 1965, after a 4-year hiatus, the government invited
applications for new concessions mostly on acreage re-
linquished by the original concession holders. Awards
were delayed until the new Petroleum Law came
into effect, but in Feb. 1966 42 new concessions were
awarded. The major winners were Occidental, at that
time a small California independent, Phillips, Aquitaine
and Agip. Occidental was awarded two blocks in the
eastern Sirt Basin, and Wintershall and Agip picked up
acreage in the same area. In the central and western Sirt
Basin the main beneficiaries were Aquitaine, Shell and
Union Rheinische. The last of the licences was an off-
shore block awarded to Aquitaine in 1968 adjacent to
the Tunisian border. A number of awards were made
to small speculative companies who, it subsequently
transpired, could not meet the eligibility criteria of the
Petroleum Law, and whose concessions were either re-
voked or reassigned.41
L I CE NCE S I S S UE D UND E R THE
1 9 6 5 P E TRO L E UM L AW, AWA RD E D
IN 1966
Terms: as in 1955 but with major changes to the royal-
ties, taxation, expenses and rebates provisions.
Concessions numbered 96–137.
Most significant awards: Wintershall: concessions 96,
97. Agip: concession 100. Occidental: concessions 102, 103.
Aquitaine: concessions 104, 105, 137.
Wildcat wells drilled on concessions 96–137
(1966–2014): 149
Principal discoveries on concessions 96–137: Al Jawf
(offshore), As Sarah, Jakharrah, Abu Attiffel, Awjilah,
Intisar A, D and E.
Rapid progress was made in the 3 years following
adoption of the 1965 Petroleum Law. Exploration activity
increased as companies began to evaluate the new conces-
sions granted in 1966. Occidental in particular was very
aggressive. The company, under the dynamic leadership
of Armand Hammer, was awarded two blocks in Mar.
1966 in areas which had been relinquished by Oasis and
Mobil. After three dry holes in concession 102 Occidental
struck oil in well D1-102 which flowed at a rate of 14,860
barrels per day, second only to Zaltan in flow-rate. The
discovery was named Awjilah (Augila). This success
was shortly overshadowed by a much more spectacu-
lar series of discoveries in concession 103. The first well,
drilled on the site of an old Mobil reconnaissance camp,
discovered the Intisar A reef (originally named Idris)
which flowed oil at a rate of 43,000 barrels per day. The
next four wildcats were all successful in discovering
similar pinnacle reefs. Intisar D, the fourth and largest
discovery flowed at a rate of 74,867 barrels per day, by
far the highest flow-rate ever measured in Libya.42 These
discoveries, made by a small California independent,
on acreage relinquished by one of the majors, caused a
sensation, and transformed the fortunes of Occidental
within a space of a few short months. Independent eval-
uation by De Golyer MacNaughton in Nov. 1967 indi-
cated that the four reefs contained r­ ecoverable reserves
of over 3 billion barrels of oil. Occidental constructed a
40-in. pipeline to Az Zuwaytinah where they built a port
 1.3 The Decade 1960–69 13

33°
Tripoli
Az Zawiyah
Tu n i s i a

1 Gharyan
32°
Jabal Nafusah

6 5
2 4
31°

8 9
Al Hamadah al Hamra
Ghadamis
10
30°

11

Algeria

12
29°
13
Murzuq Fields
Jab
al A

Oil discovery Gas condensate discovery

ka
ku

0 100 km
s

10° 11° 12° 13° 14°

1 Tiji group 8 F-90

2 NC 100 group 9 D-26
3 NC 2 group 10 NC 7 group
4 Area 47 group 11 Ghziel, A-NC 7
5 Tlakshin group 12 Al Hamra, NC 8 group
6 A-NC 118 13 Al Wafaa, A-NC 169
7 Hamadah, NC 5

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.; Geological Map of Libya (1985)

FIG. 1.7 Ghadamis Basin Oil and Gas Fields.
There have been about 120 oil and gas discoveries in the Ghadamis Basin (mostly small) of which 19 have been developed and put on production
via pipelines to Zawiyah (oil) and Zuwarah (gas).
14 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

Sirt
35
31°
Az Zuwaytinah

Ajdabiya
As Sidrah
Ras Lanuf
Al Brayqah

30°
1 2 36

ariqa
15

H
37

To Al
3 16 29
30
10 39
4

19 17 18 38
5 6 29°
31 32
20 40 48
7 11 41 47
21
42 43
22 33
8
12 23 44
45
9 25 27 34
24
26 46 28°
28 49

13 50
14

Oil field Gas field

27°
0 100 km

17° 18° 19° 20° 21° 22° 23°

1 Mabruq 14 Ayn an Naqah 27 Wahah 40 Nakhla

2 Bahi 15 Hutaybah 28 Dayfah 41 6J-59
3 Zahrah-Hufrah 16 Attahadi 29 Assumud 42 Jalu
4 Facha 17 Lahib-Dur Maradah 30 Sahel 43 Hamid
5 Ghani 18 As Surah 31 Intisar A 44 Masrab
6 Adh Dhi'b 19 Raqubah 32 Indisar D 45 Majid
7 Hakim 20 Nasser 33 Harash 46 Kalanshiyu
8 Zallah 21 Wadi 34 Chadar 47 Abu Attiffel
9 Sabah 22 Jabal 35 Antlat 48 UU-82
10 E-92 23 Tibisti 36 F-31 49 Messlah
11 Haram 24 Samah 37 Amal 50 Sarir
12 Bayda 25 Balat 38 Awjilah-Nafurah
13 Barrut 26 Bilhizan 39 As Sarah

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.; Geological Map of Libya (1985)

FIG. 1.8 Sirt Basin Oil and Gas Fields.
There have been about 300 oil and gas discoveries in the Sirt Basin, of which 130 oil fields and 11 gas fields have been developed and put on
production. They are linked to the terminals of As Sidrah, Ra’s Lanuf, Brayqah, Az Zuwaytinah and Marsa al Hariqa, by a network of pipelines.

and export ­facility. First oil arrived at the terminal on 16 than 13,700 ft. The German independent Wintershall
Feb. 1968, less than 1 year after the date of the first dis- had two discoveries in concession 97 at Hamid and
covery (Fig. 1.8).43 Tuama, and a larger discovery in a Triassic reservoir in
Other operators also had major successes. Agip discov- the Maragh Graben in concession 96 which was named
ered the Abu Attiffel field deep in the Hameimat Trough Jakharrah. Aquitaine made four substantial discoveries
in the same Nubian play as CORI's earlier discovery at in concessions 104 and 105 at Mansur, Majid, D-104 and
Rimal. Abu Attiffel produces oil from a depth of more East Masrab. Pan American discovered the As Sahabi
 1.3 The Decade 1960–69
fields, and Amoseas the Dur field. Mobil were successful
at Al Farigh, Chadar and Dur Maradah, and BP had fur-
ther successes in the Nubian province. Offshore, Libyan
Atlantic reported gas in their B1-88 well. In total 25 dis-
coveries were made during the period 1966–69 (Fig. 1.4).
Further pipelines were completed. Mobil connected the
Amal field to Ra's Lanuf in Jan. 1966 and Amoseas put
the An Nafurah field on-stream in Jun. 1966. BP's Sarir
discoveries in the south-eastern Sirt Basin were far from
the coast and a 515 km 34-in. pipeline was required to
transport the crude to Marsa al Hariqa, a deep-water
bay opposite Tubruq, where a terminal was built. The
pipeline was laid across the Great Sand Sea and was not
completed until 1966 at a cost of £35 million. The first
shipment of Sarir crude left Libya in Jan. 1967.44 The pipe-
line network was extended to tie in several other fields
during the next 3 years, including Lahib (1967), Awjilah,
Intisar A, and Intisar D (1968), Majid, Mansur and Dur
Maradah (1969), and by the end of 1969 41 fields were
on production.45 Production increased steadily from 1.56
million barrels per day in 1966 to 3.3 million barrels a
day in 1969, putting Libya amongst the top 10 oil pro-
ducing countries (Fig. 1.9).46
The situation in Libya was soon overshadowed by
events on the global stage. In Jun. 1967 the Six Day War
between Israel and its Arab neighbours led to the closing
15
of the Suez Canal and an embargo by Arab producers on
exports to western countries. When shipments resumed
from Libya the price of crude oil had risen significantly
and the Libyan government requested producing com-
panies to adjust their posted price accordingly. The com-
panies did not respond to this request and posted prices
remained unchanged.47
The remarkable success of the exploration efforts led
the Libyan government to a realisation that the present
licensing system was yielding less revenue than that of
similar oil exporting countries. In 1968, following the
lead of several Middle Eastern countries, Libya began
negotiations with ERAP-Aquitaine to set up a new type
of joint venture exploration agreement. To achieve this
objective the Libyan government established a national
oil company, the Libyan General Petroleum Corporation
(Lipetco). It was given a broad remit to participate on
behalf of the Libyan government in exploration, drilling
operations, production, refining and transportation of
oil and gas, both domestically and internationally. The
joint venture agreement with Aquitaine signed in Apr.
1968 marked a new beginning and after that time no
further licences were issued under the 1965 Petroleum
Law. The terms under which these agreements were
signed ­varied, but in general they involved substantial
work commitments on the part of the foreign partner.

1,400

1,200
Oil production MMbbls/year

1,000
A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6

800 B1

600

400

200

0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008

Year
Key factors
A1 Unrestrained production from early discoveries
A2 State participation and nationalisation
A3 Production increase from Zallah Trough discoveries
A4 International sanctions
A5 Production increase from Murzuq Basin discoveries
A6 Disruption following overthrow of Qadafi regime
B1 Production limited by OPEC quotas

Source: BP Statistical Review

FIG. 1.9 Oil Production by Year.
Oil production in Libya has been determined by regime change, varying government policies and OPEC quota limitations.
16 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
Exploration costs would be borne entirely by the foreign
operator and Lipetco would only become involved after
a commercial discovery. Its level of involvement would
depend on the production rate. The foreign partner
would finance the appraisal and development costs and
Lipetco's share of these costs would only be paid after
production start-up when it could quickly be recovered
from oil sales.48 A large number of blocks were put up
for bid under the new terms but in the event, along with
ERAP-Aquitaine, only Shell, Agip and Ashland were
awarded contracts, and the large remaining tracts of re-
linquished acreage reverted to the government.
J OI N T V ENTURE LICENCES ,
1968–73
Terms: participation of Libyan state oil company
Lipetco; exploration, appraisal and development costs to
be borne by foreign operator; reimbursement of Lipetco's
share of costs to be paid from oil sales following produc-
tion start-up.
Concessions numbered LP1–LP31 with multiple blocks
in many of the concessions.
Most significant awards: Aquitaine LP1–LP3, Agip LP4,
Ashland, LP5. Unallocated blocks LP6–LP31 retained by
Lipetco.
Wildcat wells drilled on Joint Venture licences
1968–2014: 22
Discoveries on Joint Venture blocks: Al Mheirigah
The Petroleum Exploration Society of Libya continued
to flourish in the 1960s, publishing highly regarded an-
nual field-trip handbooks on areas such as South-Central
Libya and Chad, northern Cyrenaica and south-western
Fezzan. The Society also produced publications on the
Miocene rocks of Maradah, Gemini Space photographs
of Libya, Libyan microfacies, and on the stratigraphy
of the Jabal Nafusah. The First Saharan Symposium
was held in 1963 and a new geological map of Libya at
a scale of 1:2,000,000 was produced in 1964. Oil compa-
nies slowly began to release data starting in 1967 with
publications on the Zaltan and Sarir fields, and the First
Symposium on the Geology of Libya was held in Tripoli
in 1969, the fore-runner of many symposia held in Libya
during the next four decades.49
In Sep. 1969, the old regime came to abrupt end with
the overthrow of the king in a coup d'etat led by Colonel
Mu'ammar al Qadafi. A Revolutionary Command
Council was established to take over the administration
of the country, and new ministerial appointments were
made. The new government made it clear that existing
agreements with foreign oil companies would be hon-
oured, and that there was no intention of ­nationalising
the Libyan oil industry.50 To emphasise this new be-
ginning the state company Lipetco was renamed the
National Oil Corporation (NOC).
1.4 THE DECADE 1970–79
One of the first priorities of the new government was
to negotiate the withdrawal of British and American
forces from Libya. Agreement was reached surprisingly
quickly, and British forces were withdrawn by 28th
March, and the American evacuation of Wheelus Field
was completed by 30 Jun. 1970.51 Henceforth the British
and American oil companies would no longer shelter
under the protection of their respective armed forces.
The new government was anxious to secure a more eq-
uitable posted price for oil produced in Libya, and when
negotiations failed to make significant progress the gov-
ernment responded by imposing draconian production
cuts on the grounds that wells were being overproduced
and were causing damage to the reservoirs. The cuts
were first applied to Occidental which by 1969 was pro-
ducing over 800,000 barrels of oil per day, mainly from
the Intisar fields. In Jun. 1970 their production was cut
to 500,000 barrels per day and in August to 440,000 bar-
rels per day. Similar cuts were imposed on Amoseas,
Oasis, Mobil and Esso. Occidental sought help from
the other producers, particularly Esso, to make up the
shortfall, but no company was willing to assist.52 Further
pressures were applied by the government. In July the
government nationalised the marketing of oil products
in Libya, a port tax was imposed on all oil shipped from
Libyan ports, and Esso was prevented from starting up
its LNG plant at Al Brayqah.53
This confrontation had an immediate effect on explo-
ration drilling which fell by 50% within a few months.
Because Libyan oil accounted for 90% of Occidental's
total worldwide production it was forced to concede
not only an increase in posted price of 30 cents per bar-
rel, but an increase in tax to 58% and an adjustment to
the base gravity on which the posted price was calcu-
lated. Armand Hammer related the story of his negoti-
ations with Major Jalloud, Finance Minister of the new
regime. He was politely received in Jalloud's office, but
then Jalloud pointedly placed his revolver on the table
between them. Negotiations continued for over a week
and every night Hammer would fly in his personal plane
to Paris, rather than overnight in Tripoli.54 It was plain
for all to see that the new government was going to be
much more ruthless in its actions than the previous one.
Within a month all of the producing companies had been
forced to agree to similar increases, with the exception
of Gulf and Phillips, who chose to relinquish their con-
cessions. The production cuts which had been imposed
on Occidental in the summer were lifted, but the cuts
 1.4 The Decade 1970–79
in the other companies production remained in force.
Other OPEC members were not slow to follow Libya's
example and in Dec. 1970 at a meeting in Caracas OPEC
ministers resolved to adopt the Libyan measures as stan-
dard.55 Libya had moved from being a peripheral mem-
ber of OPEC to being one of its leaders.
Belatedly the operators in Libya decided that action
must be taken to stop the government applying pressure
against the weakest members. As a result they estab-
lished a secret agreement which came to be called the
Libyan Producers Agreement in which the producing
companies undertook to support each other in the event
of government action against a member company. They
also agreed that in the event of forced production cuts
the other members would make up the difference at cost.
In the discussions with the government which followed
the companies for the first time formed a united front,
and a further general agreement was signed in Apr. 1971
which applied standard conditions to all the producing
companies.56
The next crisis was not long in coming. In Dec. 1971
the Libyan government unexpectedly nationalised the
interests of BP in retaliation for Britain's failure to pre-
vent three islands in the Arabian Gulf from being occu-
pied by Iranian troops following the removal of British
military presence from the area. BP's production at this
time—mostly from As Sarir—was about 430,000 barrels
per day. The decision included provision for compen-
sation, the amount to be decided by the Libyan Courts.
BP immediately appealed against the nationalisation
decision under the terms of the Petroleum Law, but the
government did not respond. BP attempted to embargo
the sale of As Sarir crude at European destinations, but
the Libyan government circumvented this problem by
exporting As Sarir cargoes to the Soviet Union. After a
judgement in favour of BP at the International Court
of Justice, the Libyan government finally paid BP £17.4
million in compensation.57 A new state-owned company,
named with some irony, Arabian Gulf Oil Company
(Agoco) was set up to operate the BP concessions.
The question of state participation had been discussed
by OPEC since 1968 and Libya strongly supported these
objectives. The award of joint venture licences had be-
gun before the revolution, and between May 1969 and
1973 all of the concessions offered in 1968 but not taken
up were awarded to Agoco. In addition the new govern-
ment was keen to extend state participation into existing
licenses. Their first opportunity came in 1972. The Abu
Attiffel field had been developed by Agip, but produc-
tion start-up was prevented by the government, osten-
sibly because of concerns about lack of provision for the
associated gas. After many months of negotiation Agip
offered the government a 50% interest in two concessions
as a means of breaking the deadlock. The government
accepted and the state interest was vested in Agoco.58
17
State participation in all concessions became a stated
goal during 1972 with the government demanding a
51% interest in all existing licences. Firstly it was im-
posed on Occidental and Oasis, and then on the three
majors Amoseas, Esso and Mobil. All of the companies
protested, but their protests were overtaken by external
events.
Between Jun. 1973 and Sep. 1973 the posted price of
Libyan crude increased from $3.56 to $4.31 per barrel,
largely due to external forces. OPEC members however
were becoming increasingly impatient with the gap
which still existed between posted price and actual mar-
ket price which none of their measures had succeeded in
closing. The Yom Kippur War of Oct. 1973 provided the
excuse they needed. Shortly after hostilities began the
OPEC Gulf States announced that in future posted price
would be established by the host nations based on actual
market prices, and in December, following rapid price
rises caused by the war, they announced that the posted
price would be calculated so as to yield a $7 per barrel
income for the host government. By May 1974 the posted
price for Libyan crude had risen to $10.11 per barrel.59
In 1973 as a further expression of growing nationalist
feeling Libya claimed the entire Gulf of Sirt to be part of
its territorial waters. This was in contravention of inter-
national law and was to lead to a number of confronta-
tions between Libya and the United States in the years
that followed. The Arab–Israeli conflict of Oct. 1973
had profound consequences on the Libyan oil indus-
try. The Libyan government cut production by 5% and
embargoed oil shipments to the United States and the
Netherlands. In Jun. 1973 the government nationalised
the assets of N.B. Hunt, in Feb. 1974 the holdings of
Amoseas, and in April those of Shell. The Amoseas op-
erations were transferred to a new NOC operating com-
pany called Umm al Jawaby. Esso and Mobil acquiesced
to 51% state participation in April.60 By the summer of
1974 the government had largely achieved its partici-
pation objectives. It had taken over BP, Hunt, Amoseas
and Shell's holdings completely, it had a 51% interest in
the concessions of Esso, Mobil, Oasis and Occidental, it
had joint venture agreements with Aquitaine and Agip,
and it had taken possession of all of the available open
acreage. As a result of these measures the government
controlled approximately 70% of production.
The disputes over posted price, and the actions taken
by the new government led to a drastic reduction in
exploration activity. Seismic activity was greatly re-
duced and rig counts dropped to alarming levels. Esso
Standard, for instance, stopped exploration drilling in
the Sirt Basin after May 1973, and concentrated all their
efforts on field development and production. From the
68 wildcats drilled in 1968 the level fell to only 22 wild-
cats in 1974 (Fig. 1.3). Exploration footage drilled in 1974
was 155,000 ft compared with 1.08 million feet in 1963.61
18 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

The reduction in exploration drilling inevitably led to a
reduction in the rate of new discoveries, and to a decline
in reserves. Apart from the giant Messlah field which was
discovered by BP just before nationalisation the discover-
ies made during this period were small. For the first time
the amount of reserves added fell below the amount of
oil produced. Production during the 5-year period from
1970 to end 1974 totalled 4.6 billion barrels. Reserves
added were about 1.4 billion barrels.
Aquitaine began evaluation of offshore concession
137 adjacent to the Tunisian border in 1970 and made
a number of promising discoveries which proved the
presence of an excellent hydrocarbon-bearing reservoir
in the western Libyan offshore area. Exploration in this
area however was hampered by boundary disputes with
both Tunisian and Malta, both of which were eventually
submitted to the International Court of Justice for arbi-
tration, but were not finally resolved until 1985.62
Further fields were brought on stream including Bahi
and Intisar C in 1970 and Abu Attiffel and Abu Alwan in
1972. Oil production peaked in 1970 at a rate of 3.4 million
barrels of oil per day with Oasis as the major producer
and Occidental in second place.63 Thereafter produc-
tion fell in response to the production cuts and political
pressures outlined above. By 1975 total production was
down to 1.48 million barrels per day. Nevertheless gov-
ernment revenues from oil quadrupled during the same
period to $6 billion in 1974 due to the dramatic increases
in oil price and the increased government share of reve-
nues (Fig. 1.10).64 Nor was the government unduly con-
cerned about the lower levels of production. To them it
represented a convenient means of conservation.
The government however was alarmed by the de-
cline in exploration and development drilling, and in
an effort to stimulate new exploration the government
abandoned the joint venture licensing system begun in
1968, in favour of a new system of concessions based on
exploration-production sharing agreements (EPSAs). At
the same time a new concession numbering system was
introduced with the prefix NC for new concession. The
first group of the new concessions comprised acreage
relinquished by Gulf and other companies, which were
awarded to Agoco. The first awards under the EPSA I
terms were made to Occidental in Feb. 1974, less than

140

120

100
11
Oil price in $ per barrel

80 13

60
10
40 3 7
4
5 9 12

20 2
1 6
8
0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008

Year

1 Yom Kippur war 8 Asian economic crisis

2 Iranian revolution 9 9/11 attack
3 Iran hostage crisis 10 Increasing demand from emerging nations
4 Iran-Iraq war 11 Rampant demand, stagnant world
5 Saudi’s abandoned swing producer role production
6 Oil glut on world market. Saudi’s resumed 12 Global financial crisis
swing producer role 13 Arab Spring, supply disruption
7 Invasion of Kuwait. Gulf war

Source: BP Statistical Review; Energy Information Agency

FIG. 1.10 Oil Price by Year.
Oil price fluctuations from 1956 to 2015 (money of the day), and the main influencing factors.
 1.4 The Decade 1970–79
a year after the nationalisation upheaval of 1973. The
terms of the new agreement involved an equity split of
85:15 in favour of the government, with guaranteed lev-
els of exploration expenditure, and repayment of NOC's
share of development costs in the event of a commercial
discovery. This was a major victory for the government.65
This award was followed by others. Esso and Agip
received concessions in the western offshore close to
Aquitaine's acreage with an agreed offshore equity split
of 81:19. Both of these blocks were to yield significant
discoveries. Mobil, CFP and Braspetro also obtained new
concessions. Braspetro obtained a large block deep in the
Murzuq Basin in an area which was almost totally unex-
plored. Since many of the old concessions were still active
three types of concessions now co-existed side by side—
the original concessions first issued in 1955, the joint-­
venture concessions issued between 1968 and 1973, and
the production sharing concessions first issued in 1974.
EPSA I LI CENCES, 1974–7 9
Terms: Equity split between NOC and foreign operator
agreed on a case by case basis, but typically 85:15 onshore,
81:19 offshore. Exploration costs to be borne by the for-
eign operator, NOC's share of development and produc-
tion costs to be paid from oil sales following production
start-up.
Concessions numbered within the series NC1–NC97.
Most significant awards: Occidental: NC29, NC74, Esso:
NC35, NC87, Agip: NC41, Braspetro: NC58. Fifty-four
blocks of mostly relinquished acreage were allocated to
Agoco or retained by NOC.
Wildcat wells drilled on EPSA I blocks (including those
on 100% state-owned blocks) 1974–2014: 187.
Discoveries on EPSA I blocks: Kabir in the Ghadamis
Basin, Bouri, Bahr Essalam and D,E G-NC35 in the western
offshore, Zallah, Fidda, Hakim, Aswad and Sabah in the
western Sirt Basin, and Qadeem in the eastern Sirt Basin.
The successes of 1974 marked the end of the Libyan
government's campaign to take control of the upstream
end of the domestic oil industry. By the end of that year
they had essentially achieved their objectives. They were
content to leave the high-cost exploration effort to for-
eign operators whilst their own financial exposure was
limited to such field developments as might take place,
with ultimate reimbursement of their share of develop-
ment costs. Amoco, which had taken over Pan American
in 1970, was unsettled by the events of 1974, and surren-
dered its holdings the following year.
Occidental was awarded a further group of conces-
sions in the Zallah Trough in 1976 in an area which
had originally been assigned to Elwerath in 1959 and
19
r­ elinquished by them in 1972. Elwerath had tested oil in
three wells but had taken no serious steps to appraise
these finds. Occidental subsequently proved these dis-
coveries to be significant finds and named them Zallah,
Aswad and Sabah. In general however, foreign opera-
tors were wary, and Esso chose to concentrate almost
exclusively on development drilling and production.
Oil shipments to the United States were resumed at the
beginning of 1975, but the economic recession following
the Arab–Israeli war led to a reduced demand for oil and
the price of Libyan crude remained below $15 per barrel
until the beginning of 1979.66
Having achieved its goal in upstream operations the
government then turned its attention to downstream ac-
tivities. The Al Brayqah refinery was too small to satisfy
domestic demand for refined products so in 1969 the
government commissioned a new refinery to be built at
Az Zawiyah with an ultimate capacity of 120,000 barrels
per day. The refinery came on stream in 1974. A further
refinery was subsequently constructed at Ra's Lanuf
with a capacity of 220,000 barrels per day which started
production in 1984.67 A petrochemical complex, which
came on stream in 1977, was constructed at Al Brayqah
where it had access to abundant supplies of natural gas,
for the production of methanol, urea and ammonia. An
ethylene plant was subsequently built at Ra's Lanuf, and
a PVC and caustic soda plant at Abu Kammash near the
Tunisian border.68 The government also wished to have
an involvement in transportation, and by the end of 1979
Libya had a fleet of 15 tankers which gave it the capabil-
ity of transporting a fair proportion of its oil products to
market under its own flag.69
Exploration drilling remained at a low level between
1975 and the end of 1979, averaging only 31 wildcat wells
per year.70 However there was a marked increase in offshore
drilling. Aquitaine drilled 10 wells on concession 137 in the
period up to the end of 1979 with several wells testing oil
and gas. Esso drilled two wells in block NC 35 without suc-
cess, and Agip began evaluation of block NC 41. The first
well drilled on block NC 41 in 1976, tested small amounts
of oil from an excellent Eocene reservoir, but the B1-NC 41
wildcat well tested 4,857 barrels of oil per day, resulting
in the first commercial discovery in the Libyan offshore.71
The discovery was named Al Bouri and was subsequently
appraised by eight delineation wells. These wells proved
Al Bouri to be a giant oil pool and the largest offshore
field in the Mediterranean (Fig. 1.11).72 Encouraged by
this success Agip drilled seven more wildcats up to the
end of 1979, many of which tested oil or gas, but none
of which was regarded as commercial. Al Bouri was the
16th giant field to be discovered in Libya (Fig. 1.12).
Following their success with Zallah, Aswad and
Sabah Occidental made further discoveries in the same
area, named Hakim, Fidda and Dahab. Mobil made
an ­excellent discovery at Ghani in the northern Zallah
20 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

K e r k e n n a h - I s is Ar c h
Cercina
Isis
A g a r e b A rc h

Ja
Miskar

rr
af
ah
Ashtart

G
ra
be
1

n
Ja
34°

rr
Gabes
2 3

af
4 5

ah
A
Djerba

rc
h
S 7
a 6
b
Ezzaouia r a
t a 8
El Biban
h 10
Medenne S 9
a
l t
Tunisia B 11
a
s
i n

33°
Da Zuwarah
ha Tripoli
r A Jif
r ch ar
ah Az Zawiyah
Te
rra
ce

11° 12° 13° 14°

Oil discovery
1 D-NC 41 7 Bahr Essalam, C-NC 41
Gas condensate discovery 2 Al Jawf, B-137 8 A-NC 41
Oil and gas pipelines 3 D-137 9 C-NC 35A
Libyan-Tunisian median line 4 Bouri, B-NC 41 10 E-NC 35A
5 E-NC 41 11 F-NC 41
0 100 km 6 C-137

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.

FIG. 1.11 North-Western Offshore Oil and Gas Fields.
Ten oil fields and 22 gas fields have been discovered in the Libyan north-western offshore, of which 2 oil fields and 1 gas field have been developed
and put on production. Bouri and Al Jawf produce via a FPSO (floating production storage and offloading) tanker, Bahr Essalam is connected by
pipeline to the shore facility at Zuwarah.

Trough, plus a string of smaller discoveries on the Al
Bayda and Az Zahrah Al Hufrah platforms. The north-
ward extension of the Messlah field into concession 80
was proved by Agoco, and several other Nubian dis-
coveries were made in concessions 65 and 80. NOC and
Agoco, operating mostly on relinquished acreage, dis-
covered oil in the Hameimat Trough at Qadeem, on trend
with the Jalu field, and in the Ghadamis Basin the Kabir
field was discovered on former Gulf acreage. The op-
erating divisions of NOC, Agoco holding mostly ex-BP
and relinquished acreage, and Umm al Jawaby holding
mostly ex-Amoseas acreage, were merged in Dec. 1979
under the Agoco banner. In the Murzuq Basin Braspetro
tested oil in their A1-NC 58 well which was the first re-
port of oil from the central Murzuq Basin.73
Production increased from 1.4 million barrels per day
in 1975 to 2.1 million barrels per day in 1979. New fields
brought on stream during this period include the giant
Messlah field, Masrab, Khalifah, Al Mheirigah and sev-
eral of Occidental's recent finds: Zallah, Aswad, Almas
and Ali. Esso's Al Hutaybah gas field also came on
stream in 1977.74
Colonel Qadafi's vision of direct democracy by means
of People's Committees was put into effect in 1977 when
local and regional power was ostensibly devolved to
scores of local committees. At the same time the coun-
try was renamed the Socialist People's Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya. This device was designed to rekindle the
flagging enthusiasm for the 1969 revolution, but it had
limited success. By late 1978 political events were again
 1.5 The Decade 1980–89 21
is a model of clarity, but contained some curious anoma-
Name Discovery Date Original oil Original
date on stream in place reserves lies like naming the Taqrifat Formation in the eastern Sirt
(MMb) (MMb) Basin after an oasis in the western Sirt Basin. Esso evi-
Zahrah-Hufrah 1958 1962 2,930 750 dently did not cooperate in the publication, so the type
Nasser 1959 1961 8,890 2,960 section for the Zaltan Formation was selected, not on the
Amal 1959 1966 5,010 1,310 Zaltan field, but on the Balat field, 70 km to the south-
Dayfah 1960 1964 5,920 2,520 west. Nevertheless the book was very welcome, and is
Sarir C 1961 1966 8,260 3,800 still in use today. In 1974 the Industrial Research Centre
Wahah 1961 1963 3,720 1,290 in Tripoli commenced the publication of a set of 1:250,000
Raqubah 1961 1963 2,190 840 geological maps of all but the sand-­covered areas of
Jalu 1963 1964 9,570 3,270 Libya. The surveyors were mostly eastern European
Awjilah-Nafurah 1965 1966 6,330 2,050 and during the 1970s 23 sheets and explanatory booklets
Sarir L 1966 1966 1,420 640 were issued. The publications are based solely on surface
Abu Attiffe 1967 1972 4,390 2,060 outcrops and contain no well information. Unfortunately
Intisar A 1967 1968 1,540 750 the stratigraphic nomenclature used by the surveyors
Intisar D 1967 1968 1,850 1,330 does not correspond to the nomenclature established by
Bahi 1968 1970 1,610 530
Barr and Weegar in the subsurface of the Sirt Basin. A
Messlah 1971 1973 3,000 1,520
1:2,000,000 summary map was produced in 1977. The
Bouri 1977 1988 2,570 640
Petroleum Exploration Society of Libya was renamed the
Shararah A 1984 1997 1,870 650
Earth Sciences Society of Libya in 1974 and continued
Shararah B 1984 1999 1,940 680
its tradition of annual field excursions, but they became
As Sarah 1989 1990 1,010 610
progressively more difficult to organise, and the last ex-
El Feel 1997 2004 1,410 520
6J-59 2001 2013 2,850 830
cursion was held in 1976. Following the first ­symposium
Total 78,280 29,550
on the Geology of Libya in 1969, a second symposium
was held in 1978. The Secretariat of Planning in Tripoli
Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.
published a National Atlas of Libya in 1978 which for-
FIG. 1.12 Giant Oil Fields. malised the spelling of Libyan geographic names, and
Twenty-one giant oil fields (>500 MMb original recoverable reserves)
have been discovered in Libya, of which 14 were discovered before
the Industrial Research Centre published a bibliography
1970. They are listed in order of discovery. Development drilling has of Libyan geology in 1978. Further information was re-
shown that several fields originally regarded as separate are now leased by oil companies on Amal, Sarir, Awjilah, Zaltan
known to be joined. and Majid.76

threatening to disrupt the relative calm of the last 3 years.

The international oil price had stabilised at around $14
per barrel during the period 1975–1978, but during 1978
protests in Tehran against the regime of the Shah of Iran
gradually gained momentum and in November Iranian
oil production began to decline sharply. In Jan. 1979
the Shah left Iran and in February the exiled Ayatollah
Khomeini returned to Tehran to take over the govern-
ment. In April OPEC set the oil price for 1979 at $14.56
per barrel, but events spiralled rapidly out of control.
In November the Iranians seized western hostages and
President Carter imposed a ban on imports of Iranian
crude to the United States. By the end of the year the
international oil price had reached $32.50 per barrel. The
stage was set for a serious escalation.75
The 1970s saw the appearance of a number of im-
portant publications on Libyan geology. Stratigraphic
nomenclature, long a bone of contention, received a wel-
come boost with the publication in 1972 of a stratigraphic
lexicon for the Sirt Basin based on subsurface data, and
published by the Petroleum Exploration Society of
Libya. The authors, F.W. Barr and A.A. Weegar, had ac-
cess to data from Oasis, Mobil and Gelsenberg. The book
1.5 THE DECADE 1980–89
During the late 1970s the government took the view
that companies were holding acreage without making
sufficient effort to evaluate it, and they demanded that
inactive acreage should be relinquished. Several com-
panies gave up acreage in 1979 and this acreage formed
the basis for EPSA II. The terms of EPSA II were signifi-
cantly less favourable to foreign operators than EPSA I.77
Nevertheless many companies showed an interest in the
new blocks on offer. Awards under the EPSA II formula
were made during the period 1980–88.
Several newcomers received blocks including the
Bulgarian and Romanian state oil companies which were
granted concessions in the Ghadamis and Murzuq Basins,
and Deminex which received concessions in the southern
Sirt Basin. Two US companies, Sun Oil and Coastal, re-
ceived a total of 10 blocks in the Sirt Basin. Shell, Agip,
Occidental and Aquitaine acquired additional blocks. At
the same time the state companies Agoco and Sirte added
further blocks to their portfolios.78 The first well drilled
on EPSA II acreage was spudded in Sep. 1981.
22 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
E PSA I I LI CENCES, 1980–8 8
Terms: Equity split between NOC and foreign operator
on a concession by concession basis. Exploration costs to
be borne by the foreign operator, NOC's share of develop-
ment and production costs to be paid from oil sales follow-
ing production start-up.
Concessions numbered NC98–NC152.
Most significant awards: Boco: NC100, NC101,
Rompetrol: NC115, Agip: NC120. Unallocated acreage was
assigned to Agoco (six blocks) and to Sirte (three blocks).
Wildcats wells drilled on EPSA II blocks (including
those on 100% state-owned blocks) 1980–2014: 154.
Discoveries on EPSA II blocks: El Shararah A,B,H and
R, 7 discoveries on NC 101 (Murzuq Basin), 17 small dis-
coveries on NC 100 (Ghadamis Basin), and A-NC 120 (first
indication of oil offshore Binghazi), plus the successful ap-
praisal of the Wadi field (Sirt Basin).
The Iranian hostage crisis, which began in Nov.
1979 and lasted until Jan. 1981, produced a dramatic
rise in the oil price, peaking at $39.50 per barrel in
May 1980. In Sep. 1980 Iraqi troops invaded Iran and
occupied the Shatt al Arab waterway. OPEC's pricing
structure collapsed in turmoil, and the oil price re-
mained volatile until 1981 when Saudi Arabia flooded
the market with cheap oil and the price stabilised. The
unstable political situation led to a general recession
and prompted a gradual move by western govern-
ments towards alternative fuel sources. An oil surplus
developed and the oil price progressively fell, reach-
ing $25.43 in Dec. 1984.79
Relations between Libya and the United States con-
tinued to deteriorate, provoked by Libya's support for
anti-American causes. In 1978 the United States imposed
a ban on the sale of aircraft and electronic equipment to
Libya and in 1981, following the Gulf of Sirt incident in
which two Libyan planes were shot down by American
carrier-based planes, they asked all US citizens to leave.80
As a result of these pressures Esso decided to close down
its operation in Libya. Their assets were transferred to
NOC in Jan. 1982 in exchange for modest compensation.
NOC established a new state-owned company, Sirte Oil,
to take over management of Esso's operations.81 By the
time of Esso's departure 2.7 billion barrels of oil had been
produced from their fields on concessions 6 and 20.82
Three months later the United States imposed an em-
bargo on the import of Libyan crude and placed further
bans on exports to Libya.
Instability continued through 1983 and 1984 as the
Iran–Iraq war intensified and OPEC's market share fell
as western countries reduced consumption and switched
to more accessible North Sea oil. In order to maintain in-
come some OPEC countries, including Libya, resorted
to discounting, selling their oil at prices below the offi-
cial OPEC price. The principal loser was Saudi Arabia
who at this time acted as swing producer, maintained
the OPEC price by adjusting its own output as required.
Saudi Arabia's oil earnings fell from $119 billion in 1981
to $26 billion in 1985, and King Fahd made it clear that
he was not willing for this situation to continue.83 In an
effort to restore a more equitable balance of production
Sheikh Yamani, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, introduced
netback dealing. This ingenious mechanism worked by
guaranteeing refiners a fixed profit on the sale of their
products. After agreeing an acceptable profit margin
with the Saudis the refiner would market his products,
deduct the agreed level of profit, and remit the balance
to Saudi Arabia. At a stroke this did away with the
fixed OPEC oil price, and created a situation favour-
able to Saudi Arabia insofar as refiners were insulated
from highly volatile crude prices. The guaranteed profit
also encouraged refiners to maximise production and
several customers signed contracts immediately. The
Saudi's were deliberately trading price for volume, but
it was a gamble which ultimately failed. The Saudi gov-
ernment reasoned that when the oil price fell below $20
a barrel high cost areas such as the North Sea would
become uncompetitive. They were wrong; the actual
production cost of North Sea oil was only about $6 per
barrel. The situation of 1979–81 was reversed. Now it
was a question of producing countries seeking markets
rather than purchasers seeking suppliers. The price of
oil tumbled from $30.81 per barrel in Nov. 1985 to $11.58
a barrel in Jul. 1986.84 The effect on exploration was
acute, as companies cut their budgets, and shut down
their exploration programmes. Libya's response to this,
the third oil crisis within 13 years, was to advocate re-
duced quotas for OPEC producers. They had cause for
concern; their oil revenues had fallen by 42% in 1 year.
By August OPEC members had been forced to agree to a
new quota system designed to ease the oil price back up
to around $18 per barrel.85 Exploration drilling in Libya
remained at very low levels in the 1980s. From 23 wild-
cat wells in 1980 the figure rose to 48 in 1984 as com-
panies evaluated their EPSA II blocks, but fell to only
13 in 1986, and did not exceed 20 per year in the rest of
the decade. During the same period, as the new quota
system came into effect, production fell from 1.9 million
barrels per day in 1980 to 1.0 million barrels per day in
1987, and reached only 1.2 million barrels per day by
1989. Even with the reduced production rate explora-
tion drilling was insufficient to replace the reserves lost
through production.
Nevertheless, despite these problems, the Libyan gov-
ernment chose this time to embark on the largest civil
engineering project ever attempted in Africa. The Great
Man-Made River Project, dubbed the eighth wonder of
the world by Colonel Qadafi, was initiated in 1983. It
 1.5 The Decade 1980–89
was designed to extract fresh-water from four large aqui-
fers deep in the Sahara desert and transport it via a 4-m
diameter pipeline to the coast where it would be used
for both domestic and agricultural purposes. The proj-
ect involved drilling 1,300 wells into Nubian Sandstone
aquifers, and laying over 2,000 km of pipeline. The main
extraction areas are at Kufrah and Tazirbu in the east,
and at two locations near Jabal Hasawnah in the west.
Phase 1 involved laying 1,200 km of pipeline from Kufrah
and Tazirbu to Binghazi and Sirt to supply 2 million cu-
bic metres of water per day, and was completed in Sep.
1989. Phase 2 with 800 km of pipeline from the Jabal
Hasawnah wells to Tripoli and the coastal plain sup-
plies 1 million cubic metres of water pay day and was
completed in Aug. 1996. Three more phases remain to be
completed at which time there will be sufficient water to
irrigate 155,000 ha of land and ‘make the desert as green
as the Libyan flag’. The project has cost around $30 bil-
lion, all financed by the Libyan government without the
need for loans. Experts claim that this is 10% of the cost
of producing a similar amount of water by desalination.
Estimates suggest that the four aquifers could contain
between 4,800 and 20,000 km3 of water each. The reser-
voirs were charged when the climate was much wetter,
between 38,000 and 14,000 years ago, and will not be re-
charged. The life expectancy of the project is difficult to
gauge, but at present rates of extraction it could last for
60–100 years and perhaps even more. Interestingly the
project had its origin with Occidental's bid for acreage in
1966. In order to sweeten the deal Armand Hammer of-
fered to conduct a search for water supplies if his bid was
accepted. Occidental fulfilled their obligation and their
efforts provided the first evidence of abundant supplies
of fresh-water in subsurface aquifers in the Kufrah area.86
The Bulgarian State company, Boco, began evalua-
tion of its acreage in 1982 and almost immediately an-
nounced a string of discoveries in concession NC 100
near the border with Tunisia. The individual discoveries
were small, and have not been developed. However on
block NC 101 on the northern edge of the Murzuq Basin
more significant finds were made in an area where Gulf
had reported oil shows in 1958. The NC101 discoveries,
along with the shows in Braspetro's A1-NC 58 well, sig-
nalled the presence of significant oil accumulations in
the previously neglected Murzuq Basin. This was spec-
tacularly borne out when Rompetrol struck oil on con-
cession NC 115. Their first two wells on the block found
large oil pools in the A and B structures, and a third dis-
covery, on structure H in 1986, made this into the largest
group of onshore discoveries for 15 years.87 The oil in
these discoveries was reservoired in Ordovician glacial
deposits and opened up an important new oil province
in the Murzuq Basin (Fig. 1.13).
Elsewhere, almost as their last act before departure,
Esso tested oil on their offshore block NC 35. Esso's
23
s­ uccessor Sirte Oil, drilled a further seven wells on the
block and had two noncommercial discoveries. Agip con-
tinued to evaluate the area around Al Bouri, and drilled
a wildcat well offshore Binghazi which tested oil and
showed for the first time that oil was present in the east-
ern offshore as well as the west. Onshore, Mobil had a
further discovery on their Al Bayda Platform block, and
Occidental discovered the Safsaf, Abraq and Themar oil
pools in the Zallah Trough.88 Esso left behind a number
of discoveries which were regarded at the time as sub-­
commercial. Sirte, the state company which acquired
Esso's assets in 1982, began an appraisal of these dis-
coveries. Several of them, like Wadi, Attahadi, Sahel and
Assumud, proved to be significant accumulations which
were subsequently developed and brought on stream.
Similarly, following the Kabir discovery in 1979, Agoco
set about an appraisal of concession NC7, formerly held
by Oasis, and made seven small discoveries in the area.
A western pipeline linking 12 small fields in former
Gulf concession 66 to the coast at Az Zawiyah was com-
pleted by NOC in 1982 and production began later that
year. Occidental put their recently discovered Zallah
Trough fields on stream, and a number of small fields in
the central Sirt Basin were also tied in to existing pipe-
lines. Thirty-seven new fields were put on production
during the decade including Ghani (1980), SE Nasser
(1988), Bouri (1988) and Wadi (1988), but most of the re-
mainder were small.
In 1984 Britain severed diplomatic links with Libya
following the shooting of a policewoman in London,
and in 1986 the United States government broke off re-
lations with Libya and imposed extensive trade sanc-
tions. A naval conflict in the Gulf of Sirt resulted in the
loss of two Libyan ships in Mar. 1986, and in April US
planes bombed Tripoli and Binghazi in retaliation for
terrorist attacks in Europe. During the raids the Libyans
shot down an American F-111 bomber which was later
set up as a trophy in Tripoli. As a result of this action
the name of the country was changed to the Great
Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In Jun. 1986
a US Presidential decree ordered US companies to close
down their operations in Libya and made it unlawful
for US citizens to work in Libya. The Libyan govern-
ment established two more state oil companies Wahah
and Zueitina to take over operatorship of the Oasis
and Occidental interests, initially for 3 years, but suc-
cessively extended over the next two decades. In 1988
Mobil handed over operatorship of its extensive conces-
sions to the German company Veba, which had been in
partnership with Mobil since 1978. This left a situation
where all of the majors had withdrawn from Libya, if in
some cases only temporarily.
1986 also marked the culmination of Libya's long-­
running dispute with Chad. The dispute originated in
1972 when Libyan troops occupied the Uzu strip which
24 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

Ghadamis Basin fields Idri

and Azzawiyah

1
Sabha
27°

6 8
7 Ubari
2 45
3

9 26°
Al Awaynat 10 Murzuq
Jab a l A

25°
Ghat Murzuq Sand Sea
kaku
s

Algeria

Oil field Gas field

0 100 km
24°
10° 11° 12° 13° 14°

1 Atshan 6 A-NC 186

2 El Shararah B 7 H-NC 186
3 El Shararah M 8 D-NC 186
4 El Shararah A 9 El Feel
5 El Shararah H 10 NC 101 / Area 147 discoveries

Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.; Geological Map of Libya (1985)

FIG. 1.13 Murzuq Basin Oil and Gas Fields.
Forty-eight oil fields and one gas field have been discovered in the Murzuq Basin, all in the period 1984–2011. Eighteen oil fields have been devel-
oped and brought on stream via a collecting centre on the Shararah A field and then by pipeline to the terminal at Zawiyah.

Qadafi claimed as part of Libya on the basis of an un-
ratified treaty between Italy and France dating from
colonial times. His aims apparently were to establish
a client state in Chad from which he could extend his
influence southwards, and to take control of part of the
Tibisti mountains which were reputed to have some ura-
nium potential. The conflict swung back and forth until
1986, when Qadafi was out-manoeuvred in the so-called
Toyota War and suffered heavy losses of both men and
equipment. The Uzu strip was ceded to Chad and a
peace treaty signed in Sep. 1987.89
In Feb. 1988 NOC signed an agreement with the
Tunisian Ministry of Industry for the joint exploration of
four offshore blocks straddling the median line between
the two countries in an area of large salt-related struc-
tures. They were named the 7th November blocks. A com-
pany called Joint Oil was established to explore the blocks
and a joint venture was later established with the Saudi
company Nimir in order to conduct drilling operations.90
At the same time the combined effect of sanctions, low oil
price and the cost of the Great Man-Made River project,
persuaded the government to introduce a new and more
 1.6 The Decade 1990–99
attractive production sharing agreement in 1989, under
the name of EPSA III. For the first time cost recovery was
allowed, bringing Libya into line with most other coun-
tries which operate production sharing contracts. The
intent was to provide rapid payback of costs, and an ac-
ceptable rate of return thereafter. These terms encouraged
a number of new companies to apply for blocks, notably
Petrofina from Belgium, Lasmo from UK, International
Petroleum Company from Canada, INA from Croatia and
OMV from Austria. In addition Shell was tempted back
into Libya and Braspetro was awarded a further block.
Nevertheless exploration activity remained at a very low
level, and discoveries in this period were proportionately
few. Sirte found a major gas-condensate accumulation at
Al Wafaa close to the Algerian border, and Wintershall
made a major discovery in the Maragh Graben which was
named As Sarah.91 In west Libya both Rompetrol and Boco
discontinued their exploration effort, largely because they
were unable to fund the cost of field development.
EPSA I I I LICENCES 1989–2 0 0 5
Terms: as for EPSA II but with improved equity percent-
ages for the foreign operator and with provision for early
cost recovery.
Concessions numbered NC153–NC216.
Most significant awards: Repsol: NC186, Lasmo: NC
174, IPC NC177, RWE: NC193 and NC195, OMV: NC163,
Fina: NC174. Also during this period three blocks were
awarded to state companies, two to Sirte and one to Agoco.
Wildcats wells drilled on EPSA III blocks (including
those on 100% state-owned blocks) 1989–2014: 156
Discoveries on EPSA III blocks: six large discoveries
on NC186, and El Feel (Elephant) in the Murzuq Basin, Al
Wafaa in the Ghadamis Basin, and several small discover-
ies in the Sirt Basin.
In Dec. 1988 Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over
Lockerbie in Scotland and in September the follow-
ing year a French plane was brought down in Niger.
Evidence was collected over a number of years which
implicated Libyan agents with both of these incidents,
which only served to make Libya more isolated, and
something of a pariah state.92
Nevertheless, despite all the political problems, many
important publications appeared in the 1980s. The pro-
ceedings of the second symposium on the Geology of
Libya held in 1978 were published in three volumes in
1980, and a third symposium was held in Tripoli in 1987.
The importance of the geological symposia held in Libya
between 1969 and 2008 cannot be over-­ emphasised.
Eighty percent of all the geological information pub-
lished on Libya during this period was contained within
25
the symposia volumes. The Industrial Research Centre
continued work on the 1:250,000 scale geological maps
producing 37 new sheets between 1980 and 1989. Four
publications did much to clear up the confusion of
stratigraphic nomenclature with contributions on Libya
as a whole, the Precambrian and Palaeozoic rocks, the
Cretaceous and Tertiary of northern Libya, and the
north-western offshore. In 1982 the first structural syn-
thesis of the Libyan offshore appeared, and Garyounis
University in Binghazi produced two valuable books on
the world-famous Sahabi vertebrate faunas and on the
palynostratigraphy of Cyrenaica.93
1.6 THE DECADE 1990–99
Another crisis erupted in Aug. 1990 with the inva-
sion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, and the subsequent panic
forced the oil price up to $35.92 per barrel during the
autumn of 1990. The ensuing Gulf War resulted in the
torching of Kuwait's oil wells by the retreating Iraqi
forces, and a UN ban on the export of Iraqi oil. Ironically
these unforeseen events largely achieved OPEC's goal
of increasing market share, and by Oct. 1992 OPEC pro-
duction had risen to over 25 million barrels per day, the
highest level since 1979.94
In 1991 indictments were submitted in French, US and
British courts against Libyan personnel for both of the
Lockerbie and UTA incidents, and in 1992 the United
Nations imposed sanctions against Libya until such time
as the suspects were handed over for trial. The sanctions
prohibited all airline traffic with Libya, froze Libyan as-
sets overseas, and banned weapons sales. Further sanc-
tions were applied in subsequent years banning the sale
of equipment for oil and gas terminals and refineries.
These sanctions were to cost Libya more than $24 billion
dollars, including $5 billion dollars in lost oil revenues.95
The years 1992–99 were difficult for the Libyan gov-
ernment. Exploration drilling was at a very low level
with only 11 exploration wildcats in 1990 and in 1991.
Activity picked up to a small extent in 1992 and 1993
as companies evaluated the acreage awarded under
the EPSA III regulations, reaching 26 wildcats in 1993,
but then fell to below 20 for the remainder of the de-
cade, reaching an all-time low of only 6 exploration
wells in 1999. Production quotas were raised by OPEC
and Libya's production increased to 1.4 million barrels
per day, remaining at this level throughout the decade.
Apart from a spike during the Kuwait crisis the oil price
remained fairly stable throughout the 1990s at around
$20 per barrel.96
The sanctions imposed on Libya had a severe effect,
particularly on the activities of the state-owned compa-
nies, and several field developments, including Mabruq
and Al Wafaa, were transferred from state companies to
26 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

foreign operators. Similarly the Rompetrol discoveries in
the Murzuq Basin were transferred to the Spanish com-
pany Repsol for development.97 Two interesting discov-
eries were made during this period. Lasmo discovered
the large El Feel (Elephant) field on their EPSA III block
NC 174, which lies adjacent to the Rompetrol discover-
ies, and in the Sirt Basin IPC's Ayn an Naqah discovery,
in the poorly explored Abu Tumayam Trough south of
the Zallah Trough, tested oil at a rate of 6,517 barrels per
day.98 In the western offshore Nimir drilled three wells
on the 7th November blocks, but all three were dry.
Twenty-nine fields came on stream in the 1990s includ-
ing As Sarah (1990), Mabruq (1995), Nakhla (1995), and
the three large discoveries in the Murzuq Basin Shararah
A (1997), Shararah B (1999) and Shararah H (1999). The
Murzuq fields were produced through a new 30-in.
pipeline to the Hamra gathering centre and then to the
Az Zawiyah terminal on the coast. Two large gas fields
were also brought on stream, Sahel (1990) and Assumud
(1993) via a spur line joining the 36 in. gas pipeline
from Nasser to Al Brayqah. The Mabruq field produces
through a spur line to Bahi and thence to As Sidrah.99
At the end of 1996 Iraq resumed oil production un-
der UN supervision. OPEC production increased in the
wake of the Gulf War, first to 25 million barrels per day,
and then in Nov. 1998 to 27.5 million barrels per day.
This last increase coupled with economic recession in the
Far East led to an oil price collapse which in Dec. 1998
reached $11.28 per barrel. The pattern of 1986 was re-
peated, and OPEC was forced to reduce production lev-
els twice during 1998 and again in Mar. 1999.100 Urgent
action was required by the Libyan government to halt
this downward slide and in Mar. 1997 NOC offered large
tracts of open acreage to bids from foreign companies.
Pan Canadian acquired two blocks in the Sirt Basin in
1997 and Repsol acquired two blocks in the Murzuq
Basin in 1998, including NC186 which was to yield very
substantial discoveries over the next few years.101
The depressed state of the industry in Libya during
the 1990s and the price collapse of 1998, in which Libya's
oil revenues fell to $5.6 billion dollars, perhaps had some
influence on the government's decision in Apr. 1999 to
hand over the Lockerbie suspects for trial. In response the
United Nations suspended the sanctions which had been
applied in 1992, and Britain re-established diplomatic re-
lations with Libya in Jul. 1999 (Figs 1.14 and 1.15).102
The 1990s saw the publication of the proceedings of
the 1987 symposium on the Geology of Libya in 1991.
Following on from these symposia it was decided to
arrange a series of symposia specifically on the sedi-
mentary basins of Libya. The first of these symposia,
on the Sirt Basin, was held in Tripoli in 1993. Three
field trip guidebooks were produced on the Zallah
Trough, Murzuq Basin and Cyrenaica. The key papers
were published in three volumes in 1996. Work on IRC
maps of Libya ground to virtual halt with the only one
sheet being issued during the decade. Several import-
ant articles dealing with Libya were published in a
volume on the petroleum geology of North Africa in
1998. Following the major oil discoveries in the Murzuq
Basin a conference on the geology of the basin was held
at Sabha in 1998.103

45,000
Cumulative original recoverable reserves (MMbbls)

40,000

35,000

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0
1956
1958
1960
1962
1964
1966
1968
1970
1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014

Year
Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.
FIG. 1.14 Cumulative Original Recoverable Reserves.
By 2014 over 40 billion barrels of original recoverable oil reserves had been found in Libya, of which half was found in the period 1956 to the end
of 1963. This chart does not include oil recoverable by advanced EOR methods.
 1.7 The Decade 2000–09 27

40,000

Cumulative original recoverable reserves

vs cumulative production (MMbbls)
35,000

30,000
Cumulative original recoverable reserves
25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000
Cumulative production
5,000

0
1956

1960
1962
1964
1966

1970
1972
1974
1976

1980
1982
1984
1986

1990
1992
1994
1996

2000
2002
2004
2006

2010
2012
2014
1958

1968

1978

1988

1998

2008
Year
Source: Nubian Consulting Ltd.
FIG. 1.15 Cumulative Original Recoverable Reserves vs Oil Production.
Cumulative original oil reserves rose dramatically in the first decade, but from 1968 the rate of increase was slower. Production during the same
period has been remarkably steady. This chart does not include oil recoverable by advanced EOR methods.

1.7 THE DECADE 2000–09
Relations between Libya and the west slowly im-
proved between 2000 and 2004. In Jan. 2001 one of the
Lockerbie suspects was found guilty and sentenced to
life imprisonment and the other was found not guilty
and returned to Libya. The Libyan government admitted
responsibility and agreed to pay compensation of $2.7
billion to the families of the victims. Following this pay-
ment the UN fully lifted the sanctions which had been
suspended in 1999. The United States initially refused to
remove Libya from the list of countries supporting ter-
rorism as specified in the compensation agreement, and
it was not until May 2006 that this final hurdle was re-
moved and normal diplomatic and trade relations were
re-established.104
In a further effort to stimulate foreign investment in
Mar. 2000 NOC appropriated inactive acreage from the
state companies Agoco and Sirte and added this to the
large areas of open and relinquished acreage available
to foreign operators. One hundred and thirty-five blocks
were offered making this the largest offer of acreage since
the 1960s. Protracted negotiations took place with many
potential companies, but in the end only 27 blocks were
awarded, to Turkish Petroleum, Repsol, CPTL, RWE,
Woodside and Shell. Shell was awarded nine blocks in the
central Sirt Basin in a deal by which the company under-
took to explore for gas and to rejuvenate and upgrade the
LNG plant at Marsa al Brayqah. The award came a year
after British Prime Minister Tony Blair paid his first visit
to Colonel Qadafi following the lifting of sanctions.105
Exploration drilling remained at a low level, averag-
ing only 13 wildcat wells per year from 2000 to the end
of 2004. The first major discovery on Repsol's block NC
186 in the Murzuq Basin was made in Oct. 2000, and
the B and D discoveries in the following year. A further
large discovery on the same block, the H field, was made
in 2004 close to the location of Gulf's A1-68 well which
tested small amounts of oil in 1959. Repsol also made a
further discovery, the O field on the adjacent concession
NC 115. In 2002 Waha made a significant discovery with
the 6 J1-59 well in the eastern Sirt Basin, and Wintershall
made two further discoveries on concession 97 in the
same area. Twenty-two fields were brought on produc-
tion during this period, including the Kalanshiyu fields
of the Nubian province (2003), the offshore Al Jawf field
(2003), Ayn an Naqah in the western Sirt Basin (2003),
Shararah M and El Feel in the Murzuq Basin (2004) and
the Al Wafaa gas condensate field in the Ghadamis Basin
(2004). Production slowly edged up from 1.4 million bar-
rels per day in 2000 to 1.6 million barrels in 2004. The in-
ternational oil price rose gradually from $19.33 per barrel
in Dec. 2001 to $40.28 in May 2004. In 2003 construction
began on the Green Stream, a 32-in. trans-Mediterranean
gas pipeline from Mellitah on the Libyan coast to Gela
in Sicily. The gas is supplied from the Bouri and Bahr
Essalam fields offshore, and from the Al Wafaa field
adjacent to the Algerian border, 530 km to the south of
Mellitah. The project was completed and inaugurated in
Oct. 2004 at a rate of 770 million cubic feet of gas per day.
Despite these encouraging trends, the government
was becoming increasingly concerned about the slow
28 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration
rate of exploration and the poor response to the acreage
offer made in 2000, so in 2004 NOC announced a radical
new initiative. The EPSA system was to be completely
overhauled. Instead of protracted negotiations with indi-
vidual companies on the terms and conditions for indi-
vidual concessions a new system of competitive bidding
was introduced. In order to simplify the process further
the old system of irregularly shaped concessions with ar-
cane numbering was to be replaced by a simple system of
numbered 1-degree quadrangles based on latitude and
longitude, similar to that used in the North Sea. The new
regulations were designated EPSA IV. In 2004 15 of the
new quadrangular blocks were put up for bid, of which
6 were offshore, some extending into deep water in the
Gulf of Sirt, 3 in the eastern and southern Murzuq Basin,
2 in the Ghadamis Basin, 1 in Cyrenaica and the other 3 in
the Sirt Basin. Companies were invited to submit sealed
bids detailing the signature bonus they were willing to
offer (which was not refundable), plus the equity share
they were willing to accept. The package for each block
contained a pre-determined work programme and a for-
mula showing how cost recovery would be structured.
NOC had finally come up with a system that was ap-
pealing to foreign companies. Bids were opened in Jan.
2005 and showed that 56 companies had applied with a
total of 104 offers for the 15 blocks. Woodside secured
four offshore blocks and Occidental obtained two blocks
in the Murzuq Basin, two in the eastern Sirt Basin and
one in Cyrenaica. Verenex/Medco obtained a block in
the northern Ghadamis Basin, and other blocks went to
Chevron/Texaco, Amerada Hess, Sonatrach, Petrobras
and Oil India. NOC collected $140 million in signature
E PSA I V ROUND 1 LICENCES ,
JA N . 2005
Terms: Competitive bidding, sealed bids, pre-determined
work programmes. Bidder required to indicate the level of
signature bonus and percentage of oil revenues it is willing
to offer to NOC. All costs to be borne by the foreign partner
for the first 5 years. Signature bonus is not refundable, even
if the bid is unsuccessful.
Concessions numbered according to the new geo-
graphic 1-degree quadrangle system, each quadrangle
about 10,660 km2. Fifteen 1-degree quadrangles put up for
bid, all 15 awarded.
Most significant awards: Verenex/Medco area 47, Hess
area 54 offshore.
Wildcat wells drilled on EPSA IV round 1 areas, 2005–
14: 45.
Discoveries: Verenex/Medco 16 small discoveries on
area 47 in the Ghadamis Basin, Hess gas discovery on area
54 offshore.
bonuses and the average equity for the foreign operator
over the 15 blocks was 19.4%. This gave Libya a higher
government take than any other country. NOC appeared
to have come up with a winner.106
Round 1 was quickly followed by round 2 which was
announced in May 2005, and the results declared in Oct.
2005. NOC was concerned that the 1-degree blocks, which
covered an area of about 10,660 km2, were too large, so
for round two opted for quarter-degree blocks of about
2,650 km2. Furthermore some of the blocks were incom-
plete where old concessions which were still current ex-
tended into them. Forty-four quarter blocks were put on
offer and 97 bids were received. No bids were received
for four of the more remote blocks. Signature bonuses for
round two totalled $103.4 million. Average production
share for the foreign companies was 13.2%. Awards were
made to Japanese companies Nippon, Japex, Mitsubishi
and Teikoku, to the Chinese company CNPC, the Indian
companies Oil India and ONGC Videsh, Indonesian
Pertamina, Russian Tatneft, Turkish Petroleum, and to
the western companies ENI, Total, Statoil, Norsk Hydro,
BG and ExxonMobil. Such was the desire for new acreage
that the equity share that companies were willing to cede
to NOC was among the highest in the world.107
E P S A I V RO UND 2 , D E C. 2 0 0 5
Terms: as for round 1, but for smaller concession areas.
Concessions numbered under the geographic quadran-
gle system, but with each 1-degree area divided into four
blocks of about 2640 km2 each. 44 blocks put up for bid, 40
awarded.
Most significant awards on EPSA IV round two blocks:
Turkish Petroleum block 147/3 in the Murzuq Basin and
Tatneft block 82/4 in the Ghadamis Basin.
Wildcat wells drilled on EPSA IV round two blocks
2005–14: 36
Discoveries: Turkish Petroleum six small discoveries on
block 147/3. Tatneft two small discoveries on block 82/4.
Crude oil prices which had remained below $40 per
barrel to mid-2004 began a sharp upward trend in the
following years, driven by ever increasing demand from
countries like China, India, Brazil and Pakistan. The rise
was inexorable, passing $60 per barrel in Aug. 2005, $80
per barrel in Oct. 2007 and $100 per barrel in May 2008.
The price peaked at an astonishing $133.93 per barrel
in Jun. 2008. However the impact of the financial crisis,
which began in late 2007, resulted in a fall in demand,
and the crude oil price tumbled back to $39.16 per barrel
in Feb. 2009. The price began to edge up again as the
crisis eased and was back up to $74.30 per barrel by Dec.
2009.108 Exploration drilling in Libya began to pick up
 1.7 The Decade 2000–09
as companies commenced the evaluation of their EPSA
IV blocks, with 21 exploration wildcats in 2005, 34 in
2006, 43 in 2007, 51 in 2008 and 40 in 2009. These were
levels which had not been seen since the 1960s. In the
period 2005 to the end of 2009 68 new oil discoveries
were announced plus 17 gas discoveries, but most of
them were small. The most significant included Repsol's
large I, J and K fields in concession NC 186 and the R
field in concession NC 115. Verenex/Medco made 17 dis-
coveries on their 47/2 and 47/4 blocks in the northern
Ghadamis Basin, but as with most Akakus discoveries,
individually they were small. RWE made a number of
small discoveries in the Mabruq area. To date only six of
these fields have been developed. However 14 oil fields
and 5 gas fields, came on stream in the period 2005–09.
These included the largest of the NC 186 discoveries in
the Murzuq Basin, and three fields in concession 97 in
the eastern Sirt Basin, plus the large Attahadi gas field
in the Sirt Basin, which was connected to the Brayqah
terminal, and the offshore Bahr Essalam gas field which
was piped to Zawiyah. Oil production increased slightly
in the second half of the decade, rising from 1.75 million
barrels per day in 2005 to 1.82 million barrels in 2008 be-
fore falling back to 1.65 million barrels in 2009.
Following the success of the first two EPSA IV rounds
NOC quickly prepared a further round of bids with sim-
ilar terms and conditions to those of the two previous
rounds. Offers were invited in Aug. 2006 for 41 quarter
blocks including 12 offshore with awards to be announced
in Dec. 2006. Twenty-nine blocks were awarded but no
bids were received for any of the blocks in Cyrenaica or
in the southern Kufrah Basin. Round 3 attracted less in-
terest than the two earlier rounds, as companies began
to realise the high cost of obtaining concessions in Libya
and the generally high-risk nature of the blocks on offer.
Gaz Prom and Exxon/Mobil each acquired four blocks in
the western offshore and ONGC four blocks in the east-
ern offshore. Other awards were made to CPC Taiwan
and Inpex in the Murzuq Basin, Tatneft in the Ghadamis
Basin, Tatneft and Petro Canada in the Sirt Basin and
Wintershall deep within the Kufrah Basin.109
E PSA I V ROUND 3 , DEC. 2006
Terms: as for round 2.
Concessions numbered under the geographic quadran-
gle system. 41 blocks put up for bid, 29 awarded.
Most significant awards on EPSA IV round 3 blocks:
Gaz Prom and Exxon/Mobil offshore, Tatneft block 82/1,
and Inpex 113/3 and 113/4 in the Ghadamis Basin.
Wildcat wells drilled on EPSA IV round 2 blocks 2006–
14: 16.
Discoveries: Oil reported in well A1-82/1 and gas in A1-
113/3, both in the Ghadamis Basin.
29
Tony Blair paid a second visit to Colonel Qadafi in
May 2007 to discuss trade and business opportunities.
Almost immediately it was announced that BP would
be granted two large areas to explore in the Ghadamis
Basin, and three deep-water blocks offshore. These ar-
rangements by-passed the EPSA IV competitive bidding
procedure, but involved an initial financial commitment
of $900 million.110
In 2007 NOC began negotiations with ENI, Occidental
and OMV to invite them to convert their pre-EPSA
contracts into EPSA IV contracts. With Occidental this
involved paying a signature bonus of $1 billion and a
commitment to invest $2.5 billion, and to accept a lower
overall production share. In return the new agreement
replaced the system by which companies received a
fixed price per barrel with the EPSA IV system which
gave a percentage price per barrel, yielding a much
higher profit per barrel when the oil price is high. In
addition all taxes, royalties and fees were to be paid by
NOC. This arrangement allowed companies to recover
their costs much more quickly, and to make substantial
profits thereafter and Occidental and OMV converted
their contracts in 2008, after which NOC began negoti-
ations with other companies. Furthermore foreign com-
panies like Occidental were henceforth able to arrange
work programmes directly with NOC rather than with
their Libyan state partner Zueitina, thus streamlining
their ambitious exploration and production plans.111
In 2008 the Veba/Petro-Canada group came to a simi-
lar agreement with NOC on eight old concessions and
the company was renamed Harouge Oil and Gas.
Other name changes were announced at the same time.
Repsol became Akakus Oil and Gas, Total/Aquitaine be-
came Mabruk, Agip became Mellitah Oil and Gas and
Verenex/Medco became Nafusah Oil and Gas. Rather
confusingly companies which have converted their old
contracts to EPSAs have started using the new well num-
bering system introduced in 2005, so that for instance the
exploration wildcat well following OO1-13 was not PP1-
13 but A1-89/2.
EPSA IV round 4 was announced in Jul. 2007 as a
‘gas round’ specifically to promote drilling for gas pros-
pects in the known and presumed gas bearing areas of
Libya. Forty-one quarter blocks were offered but the
level of interest was considerably less than in the previ-
ous rounds and only 19 blocks were awarded. None of
the offshore blocks attracted bids, but interestingly just
before the fourth round was announced ExxonMobil
was awarded offshore area 21, which along with ad-
jacent area 20 gave the company a major stake in the
deep-water area of the Gulf of Sirt. Sonatrach was
awarded four blocks near the Al Wafaa field close to
the Algerian border and Polish Oil and Gas two blocks
east of the Atshan field. Gaz Prom obtained three
blocks in the northern Ghadamis Basin close to Boco's
30 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

34°

Mediterranean Sea
33°
Tu n i s i a

32°

31°

Egypt
30°

29°

28°

27°

26°

25°

Algeria
24°

23°

Niger 22°

Chad 21°

0 100 200 300 km 20°

10° 11° 12° 13° 14° 15° 16° 17° 18° 19° 20° 21° 22° 23° 24° 25°
Source: NOC Licence Map 2008; Nubian Consulting Ltd.
FIG. 1.16 Concessions Map, 2014.
A comparison with Fig. 1.2 shows a large increase in licensed areas offshore and in the Kufrah Basin compared with 1960, but a significant re-
duction of licensed acreage in all other areas. This reflects the results of 2,000 exploration wildcat wells and the development of new geological
concepts during the period.

condensate discoveries in former concession NC 100,
and Shell obtained two blocks in the Sirt Basin close
to the Hutaybah gas field. Occidental took four blocks
in the southern Zallah Trough and RWE obtained four
blocks in Cyrenaica near Hunt's B-2 gas discovery of
1964 (Fig. 1.16).
The key papers from the 1998 Murzuq Basin Conference
held in Sabha were published in 2000, and following on
from the very successful Sirt Basin Symposium three
more major symposia on the Sedimentary Basins of Libya
series were held in Tripoli during the decade. North West
Libya was the subject of the 2000 symposium (published
 1.8 The Period 2010–15
EPSA I V R OUND 4, DEC. 2 0 0 7
Terms: as for round 3, but with special provisions in the
event of gas discoveries.
Concessions numbered under the geographic quadran-
gle system. 41 blocks put up for bid, 19 awarded.
Most significant awards on EPSA IV round 4 blocks:
Sonatrach four blocks and Polish Oil and Gas two blocks
in the southern Ghadamis Basin, Gaz Prom three blocks in
the northern Ghadamis Basin.
Wildcat wells drilled on EPSA IV round 2 blocks
2007–14: 6.
Discoveries: Gas indications in three of Sonatrach's
wells, and in two wells of Polskie Oil and Gas.
in 2003), East Libya was tackled in 2004 (published 2008)
and Southern Libya in 2008 (published 2012), thus com-
pleting the series begun in 1993. Seven more sheets of
the geological map of Libya were completed covering
outcrops on the eastern flank of the Murzuq Basin and
around the periphery of the Kufrah Basin, bringing the
total number of sheets published to date to 68.112
1.8 THE PERIOD 2010–15
The major changes in the decade 2000–09 were as
nothing compared with the climactic events which un-
folded early in the new decade. In Dec. 2010 the first pro-
tests took place against the authoritarian government in
Tunisia, heralding the start of the so-called Arab Spring
which subsequently swept through the Arab world.
President Ben Ali fled from Tunisia in Jan. 2011, and
in February President Mubarak of Egypt was ousted.
In Libya protests against the government began on 15
Feb. 2011 and rapidly escalated into a violent civil war.
With the imposition of a UN no-fly zone in March and
the intervention of NATO naval and air forces, govern-
ment troops were halted on the outskirts of Binghazi,
and after bitter fighting were eventually driven back
westwards. With ever increasing momentum the anti-
government forces occupied town after town and Tripoli
fell on 28th August. Qadafi's home town of Sirt, and his
final refuge, was overrun on 20 Oct. and Qadafi was
killed on the same day, thus ending a rule of 42 years.
The fighting destroyed much of Libya's infrastructure,
and the oil industry was particularly hard hit. The oil
terminals at Zawiyah, Es Sider, Ra's Lanuf and Brayqah
were all badly damaged and many of the oil and gas
pipelines were put out of action, and even the plant
manufacturing the sections of concrete pipeline for the
Great Man-Made River was bombed and destroyed by
NATO planes. Power passed to the National Transitional
Council whose task was to prepare for elections to a
General National Congress. The election was held in
31
Jul. 2012 and Ali Zeidan was appointed Prime Minister.
The NTC was dissolved and the GNC set about organis-
ing a constituent assembly tasked with preparing Libya's
new constitution. Progress has been severely hampered
by the unwillingness of the local militias to accept the
authority of the National Congress or to give up their
weapons. Militia groups still control large areas of the
countryside, and the American ambassador to Libya
was murdered in Binghazi in Sep. 2012. The militias
have been able to disrupt oil and gas production almost
at will in order to achieve their goals, which has led the
government to bring in foreign private security firms to
guard oil installations.113
In 2010, the year before the revolution, 53 exploration
wildcat wells were drilled, the highest total since 1969.
Sixteen discoveries were announced, including three
by Turkish Petroleum in the northern Murzuq Basin
and three by Medco in the northern Ghadamis Basin.
Six wells were spudded in early 2011, but all operations
were suspended on the outbreak of the civil war and
foreign companies removed their personnel as the fight-
ing intensified. Just prior to the revolution four fields in
the northern Ghadamis Basin, discovered by Boco in the
1980s, were brought on stream.
The Libyan oil industry was badly affected by the
civil war. Infrastructure was damaged or destroyed and
production was shut down from most fields. Production
in 2010 was 1.66 million barrels per day, but only 480,000
barrels per day in 2011. Following the death of Qadafi
however priority was given to repairing damaged in-
stallations, and bringing production back on stream.
By the end of 2011 oil production was over 1.0 million
barrels a day, and the average for 2012 was 1.5 million.
Remarkably even some exploration wells were drilled
during the unsettled times after the death of Qadafi.
Eight new wildcats were started in 2012, 16 in 2013 and 13
in 2014. In Sep. 2013 the situation deteriorated as armed
militia seized several of the major oilfields and produc-
tion plummeted to less than a 100,000 barrels per day.
In May 2012 Shell announced that it was suspending its
exploration programme in Libya, citing disappointing
drilling results and spiralling costs. Its main effort had
been to explore for gas in the deep Ajdabiya Trough, but
the doubling of gas exports from Qatar and the rapid in-
crease in the production of shale gas in the United States
led to a decline in world gas prices. Shell's commitment
to upgrade the LNG facilities at Brayqah remained un-
fulfilled.114 The price of crude oil on the world market in
the period Jan. 2010–Oct. 2014 fluctuated between $80
and $110 per barrel, but fell dramatically in Jan. 2015 to
$47.79 as the Chinese economy began to falter, and by
Dec. 2015 stood at $37.04 per barrel, illustrating yet again
the volatility of the international oil market. Nevertheless
NOC has prepared development plans extending for 4
or 5 years into the future with a dozen or so fields ear-
marked for development. NOC continues to function,
32 1. History of Oil and Gas Exploration

some production is continuing, and efforts are being
made to maintain and repair oilfield installations, but by
the summer of 2015 the political situation in Libya had
worsened to such an extent that two rival governments
were competing for power, one based in Tripoli and the
other in Tubruq, foreign embassies had closed, foreign
companies had withdrawn their personnel, ISIS had es-
tablished a presence in Darnah, Binghazi and Sirt, and
militia groups still exerted control over large swathes of
the country. It is surely a tragedy that a revolution which
began with such high hopes should have been allowed
to descend into such chaos. At the time of writing a UN
brokered plan was being discussed for a government of
national accord, based in Tunis in a fresh attempt to es-
tablish stability and tackle the threat from ISIS.115
27. Sarir discovery: BAAPG, 1962, vol. 46, p. 1218, field description:
Gillespie and Sanford, 1967, p. 181–193.
28. BAAPG, 1962, vol. 46, p. 1215–1221; BAAPG, 1963, vol. 47, p.
1368–1377.
29. BAAPG, vols. 46 and 47, op.cit.
30. Waddams, 1980, p. 101–114.
31. Waddams, 1980, p. 117–124.
32. Waddams, 1980, p. 137–151. Waddams was employed by the
Ministry of Petroleum Affairs, and was involved in the negotia-
tions which led to the 1965 Petroleum Law.
33. BAAPG, vols. 46 and 47, op. cit. 1964, vol. 48, p. 1645–1653; 1965,
vol. 49, p. 1244–1251; 1966, vol. 50, p. 1691–1701; 1967, vol. 51, p.
1571–1579.
34. BAAPG, vols. 46–51, op. cit.
35. Waddams, 1980, p. 198.
36. BAAPG, 1969, vol. 53, p. 1714.
37. BAAPG, volumes for relevant years.

Endnotes 38. Waddams, 1980, p. 197.

39. Wright, 1969, p. 256–257.
1. Dearden, 1976, p. 245–296; Wright, 1969, p. 118–190; Wellard, 1965, 40. Waddams, 1980, p. 199–200.
p. 133–190.
41. Waddams, 1980, p. 165–169.
2. Wright, 1969, p. 107–109; Wellard, 1965, p. 191–214.
42. Occidental discoveries: Hammer, 1987, p. 337–344.
3. Gregory, 1911, p. 572–615.
43. Hammer, 1987, p. 340.
4. Wright, 1969, p. 147–168.
44. Wright, 1969, p. 251.
5. Wright, 1969, p. 169–184.
45. BAAPG, 1967, vol. 51, p. 1571–1579; BAAPG, 1968, vol. 52, p.
6. Vinassa de Regny, 1912. 1495–1504; BAAPG, 1969, vol. 53, p. 1709–1717; BAAPG, 1970, vol.
7. Wikipedia article: Ardito Desio. Oil seeps Desio, 1939, p. 387–394. 54, p. 1466–1473.
8. Ettalhi et al., 1978, p. 38–44. 46. Waddams, 1980, p. 206.
9. Waddams, 1980, p. 27; Wright, 1969, p. 244. 47. Wright, 1981, p. 232.
10. Crema, 1926, p. 49–50. 48. Waddams, 1980, p. 176–180.
11. Wright, 1981, p. 220. 49. South-Central Libya and Chad, PESL, 8th annual vol. 1968, N.
12. Wright, 1969, p. 185–227. Cyrenaica, PESL 10th annual vol. 1968, SW Fezzan, 11th an-
nual vol. 1969. Miocene Maradah, Selley, 1966, 30 pp.; Gemini,
13. Wright, 1969, p. 230.
Pesce, 1968, 81 pp.; Microfacies Lehmann, 1968, 80 pp., Jabal
14. Waddams, 1980, p. 57. Nafusah Hammuda, 1969, 74 pp. 1st Saharan Symposium, Rev.
15. Waddams, 1980, p. 57–70; Gurney, 1996, p. 33–41. Inst. Fran. Pet. 1963. Geological map 1:2,000,000 Conant and
Goudarzi, 1964, Zaltan, Fraser, 1967, p. 259–264, Sarir, Gillespie
16. Annual summaries of petroleum developments in Libya were
and Sanford, 1967, p. 181–193. 1st Symposium Geology of Libya,
published in successive volumes of the Bulletin of the American
Univ. Libya, 1969.
Association of Petroleum Geologists (BAAPG) up to 1988. For first
licence awards see 1956, vol. 40, p. 1611. 50. Wright, 1981, p. 141–142.
17. American Association of Petroleum Geologists, bulletins, 51. Wright, 1981, p. 141–142.
Petroleum Developments in Africa, 1957–61. 52. Hammer, 1987, p. 344–349.
18. First well under 1955 Petroleum Law, BAAPG, 1957, vol. 41, p. 53. Waddams, 1980, p. 232.
1568, 1571.
54. Hammer, 1987, p. 347.
19. BAAPG, 1959, vol. 43, p. 1653–1657.
55. Waddams, 1980, p. 231–236.
20. Liberator bomber: Lady's Men, Martinez, 1995, 197 pp.
56. Libyan Producers' Agreement: Waddams, 1980, p. 240.
21. BAAPG, 1959, vol. 43, p. 1653–1657.
57. BP Nationalisation: Waddams, 1980, p. 251–253.
22. BAAPG, 1959, vol. 43, p. 1653–1657; BAAPG, 1960, vol. 44, p.
58. Waddams, 1980, p. 254–255.
1122–1126.
59. Wright, 1981, p. 236.
23. Zaltan flowrate: BAAPG, 1960, vol. 44, p. 1122, field description:
Fraser, 1967, p. 259–264. 60. Waddams, 1980, p. 256.
24. BAAPG, vols. 43 and 44, op. cit. 61. BAAPG, 1975, vol. 59, p. 1873–1874; BAAPG, 1976, vol. 60, p.
1769–1770.
25. Burollet, 1960, p. 1–62. See discussion in introduction to Barr and
Weegar, 1972, p. 3–4. 62. Boundary disputes. Wright, 1981, p. 250.
26. BAAPG, 1961, vol. 45, p. 1163–1168; BAAPG, 1962, vol. 46, p. 63. Waddams, 1980, p. 274.
1215–1221. 64. Wright, 1981, p. 227.
 1.8 The Period 2010–15
65. Production Sharing Agreements: Waddams, 1980, p. 260–263.
New concessions: BAAPG, 1975, vol. 59, p. 1873–1874.
66. Oil price 1975–1979: Gurney, 1996, p. 133.
67. Al Brayqah refinery: Waddams, 1980, p. 201–202. Az Zawiyah
refinery: Gurney, 1996, p. 151–152. Ra's Lanuf refinery: Gurney,
1996, p. 153–154.
68. Gurney, 1996, p. 203–206.
69. Waddams, 1980, p. 280.
70. BAAPG, 1976, vol. 60, to 1980, vol. 64.
71. BAAPG, 1978, vol. 62, p. 1798.
72. Thomas, 1995b, p. 100.
73. BAAPG Annual Petroleum Developments in North Africa vol-
umes 60–64.
74. Production: Gurney, 1996, p. 92. Fields on stream: BAAPG, vols.
60–64.
75. Background: Yergin, 1991, p. 678–680. Political situation, oil price
and chronology: US Energy Information Administration website,
January 2000.
76. Barr and Weegar, 1972, PESL, 179 pp. 1:250,000 maps and mem-
oirs, Industrial Research Centre, 1974 to present, 68 sheets to date.
1:2,000,000 map Al Maghrabi and Cheshitev, IRC, 1977. Annual
field excursion handbooks 1970–76, PESL. Second Symposium on
the Geology of Libya, Academic Press, 1980, 3 vols. National Atlas
of Libya, Secretariat of Planning, Tripoli, 1978, 118 pp. Bibliography
of Libyan Geology, Ettalhi et al., IRC, 1978, 135 pp.; Amal, Roberts,
1970; Sarir, Sanford, 1970; Awjilah, Williams, 1971, 1972; Zaltan,
Bebout and Pendexter, 1975; Majid, Winnock and Mermod, 1979.
77. Gurney, 1996, p. 69–70.
78. Gurney, 1996, p. 69–70; BAAPG, 1982, vol. 66, p. 2164–2165.
79. Yergin, 1991, p. 710–714.
80. Gurney, 1996, p. 226.
81. Gurney, 1996, p. 71.
82. The figure of 2.7 billion barrels is derived from the annual pro-
duction figures quoted in the BAAPG annual volumes up to 1982,
with some interpolated values.
83. Yergin, 1991, p. 746–747.
84. Yergin, 1991, p. 748–752.
85. Yergin, 1991, p. 750–751.
86. Great Man-Made River www.global research.ca ‘Libya's water
wars and Gaddafi's Great Man-Made River project. www.wiki-
pedia Great Man-Made River. Occidental's involvement Hammer
and Lyndon, 1987, p. 336.
87. Gurney, 1996, p. 86–87; Thomas, 1995b, p. 100.
88. BAAPG, 1980, vol. 64, to 1986, vol. 70.
89. Wikipedia Chadian-Libyan conflict and Wikipedia Toyota War.
90. 7th November blocks, Middle Eastern Economic Survey, 5 May
1997 and 10 May 1999.
91. Gurney, 1996, p. 72–80, 181–182.
92. Wikipedia article Pan-Am 103.
33
93. Second Symposium Geol. Libya (1978), published in 3 vols.,
Academic Press London, 1980. Maps at 1:250,000 Industrial
Research Centre, Tripoli. Stratigraphic Lexicon of Libya, Banerjee,
IRC 1980. Pre-Mesozoic Mamgain, Bull. 14, IRC, 1980. U. Cretaceous
and Tertiary Megerisi and Mamgain, Bull. 12, IRC 1980. NW
Offshore, Hammuda et al. ESSL Tripoli, 1989. Structure ­offshore
Finetti, 1982, p. 247–312. Sahabi Boaz, Garyounis Univ. Bull No. 4
1982. Palynostratigraphy NE Libya, Garyounis Univ, 1988.
94. US Energy Information Administration, January 2000, p. 14–15.
95. Sanctions: Gurney, 1996, p. 226–230. Revenue losses: US Energy
Information Administration, July 1999, Country Review: Libya,
EIA Website.
96. Websites of Federal Reserve, Energy Information Agency and BP.
97. US Energy Information Administration, July 1999, Libya.
98. Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain Newsletter,
Elephant field: May 1999, p. 51, Ayn an Naqah field: August-
September 1999, p. 71.
99. US Energy Information Administration, July, 1999, Libya.
100. US EIA January 2000, World Oil Market, p. 24–30.
101. NOC open acreage map, 1997.
102. BBC News Channel website 15 October, 2004.
103. 1987 Geology of Libya symposium, vols. 4–7, Elsevier, 1991.
1993 Sedimentary Basins Symposium: Sirt Basin, 3 vols. Elsevier,
1996. Field trip guide-books: Zallah, Abadi and Van Dijk, 1993;
Murzuq, Abugares and Ramaekers, 1993; Cyrenaica, El-Hawat
and Shelmani, 1993. Geological map of Libya Sheet NG 33-4, Al
Haruj al Aswad. Petroleum Geology of North Africa, Geol. Soc.
Special Pub. No. 132, 1998. 1998 Murzuq Symposium, Elsevier, 1
vol. 2000.
104. Wikipedia article Pan-Am flight 103.
105. Shell deal. Daily Telegraph, 3rd May 2005.
106. NOC EPSA IV Round 1 publicity material. Website www.libyan-
investment.com/epsa. Website www.borsaitaliana 8 June 2005
Libya EPSA IV ends a European party?
107. Oil and Gas Journal, October 24th 2005, p. 39–44.
108. Website Business Research Plus, www.bizlib247.wordpress.com, 5
January 2011.
109. Oil and Gas Journal February 5th 2007, p. 41–44.
110. The Guardian, 30 May 2007.
111. Website wiki.openoil.net: EPSA IV.
112. 1998 Murzuq Symposium, Elsevier, 1 vol., 2000. NW Libya, Earth
Sciences Society of Libya, 3 vols., 2004. East Libya ESSL, 4 vols.,
2008. South Libya, ESSL, 3 vols., 2012. Geol. Map of Libya, IRC
Tripoli, 7 sheets, 2007.
113. Wikipedia: The Libyan Revolution, and Aftermath of the Libyan
Civil War.
114. Shell's decision to terminate exploration www.arabianoilandgas.
co, article 10445, 9th July 2012.
115. Oil price: www.macrotrends.net. Oil production BP Statistical
Review, 2015. Political situation: Al Jazeera 19 January 2016.
 C H A P T E R
Plate Tectonic History
O U T L I N E
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Present-Day Africa
2.3 Rodinia
2.4 The Pan-African Orogeny and the
Assembly of Pannotia
2.5 The Saharan Metacraton
2.1 INTRODUCTION
The later chapters of this book deal with Libya and
immediately adjacent areas, and it is easy to forget that
during geological history the region which was to be-
come Libya was located very differently from its present
position. During the Ordovician and Silurian, as part of
Gondwana, it passed close to the south pole, and during
the Triassic, as part of Pangaea, it crossed the equator,
from south to north. From the point of view of sedi-
mentology, stratigraphy and orogenesis it is important
to understand the context in which these events took
place. For this reason the present chapter will briefly
review the plate tectonic history of the area from the
Neoproterozoic to the present day.
Much progress has been made in the last 10 years on
unravelling the tectonic evolution of Africa, and of the
Tethys and Mediterranean, building on the pioneering
work of the 1980s and 1990s. New palaeomagnetic and
radiometric age-dating data have become available, de-
tailed field studies and laboratory analyses have been
carried out and computerised reconstructions have be-
come more sophisticated.
Using these approaches it has become possi-
ble to trace the history of plate movements from
Petroleum Geology of Libya
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63517-4.00002-8
2
35 2.6 Gondwana 40
35 2.7 Pangaea 43
36 2.8 Tethys 44
2.9 Tethys to Mediterranean 49
37
39
the s­hadowy period of the Rodinia super-continent
during the Proterozoic, through the reorganisation of
plates to form the second super-continent of Pannotia
in the late Proterozoic, to the assembly of Gondwana
during the early Palaeozoic. The later history of
Gondwana, the formation of the third super-continent
of Pangaea towards the end of the Palaeozoic, and the
eventual separation of Laurasia and other plates in the
Mesozoic are now more clearly understood. The study
of the history of the Tethys Ocean has also made great
progress, but is complicated in the Mediterranean sec-
tor by the fact that much of the evidence has been de-
stroyed or at least greatly modified by the subduction
of much of the Tethyan sea floor beneath the European
and Asian plates.
2.2 PRESENT-DAY AFRICA
The crustal basement of present-day Africa at its sim-
plest can be regarded as belonging to three main phases.
At its core are three ancient cratons, Kalahari, Congo
and West African, plus the much smaller Tanzania
craton, which are Archaean and older Proterozoic
in age, that is older than 2 Ga. These cratons are sur-
35 Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
36 2. Plate Tectonic History

n
O roge
Atlas

30°

Trans-Saharan Orogen

Ara
Saharan Metacraton

bia
nS
hie
20°

ld
Mauritanian
Orogen

West African

East A
Craton
10°
rogen

fric
ican O
C entral Afr

an Oro
0°

gen
Congo
Ta
Craton n
Cr zan
at ia
on

10°

n
ge
ro
O
m
ar
a
20°
Da
Key
Kalahari
Phanerozoic (< 0.54 GA) Craton
Neoproterozoic (1.0 – 0.54 Ga) 30°
Cape Orogen
Pre-Neoproterozoic (>1.0 Ga)

Orogenic belts
40°
20° 10° 0° 10° 20° 30° 40° 50° 60°
Source: van Hinsbergen et al. (2011); Meert and Lieberman (2008); Gray et al. (2007)
FIG. 2.1 Africa, Tectonic Elements.
Africa is an amalgam of three ancient cratons separated by orogenic belts formed during the Pan-African orogeny, with three younger fold belts
on the periphery. The Saharan Metacraton is an assemblage of smaller cratonic fragments, orogenic belts and oceanic accreted terranes which has
been extensively remobilised.

rounded and separated by orogenic belts, which are 2.3 RODINIA

largely of Neoproterozoic age, from 1 to 0.54 Ga, with
small areas of younger crust on the periphery. The In order to understand how present-day Africa was
orogenic belts were formed principally during the assembled it is necessary to examine the palaeomagnetic
Pan-African orogeny from about 650 to 540 Ma, which evidence and radiometric dating of the basement rocks.
culminated in a thermal event which remobilised large There is evidence of extremely ancient rocks in the exposed
areas of existing crust. In some areas remobilisation was cratonic cores of Africa. Rocks with an age of 3.6 Ga have
relatively mild as on the Arabian shield, but in others been dated from the Kalahari craton, and all three cra-
was much more intense, as on the Saharan metacraton. tons were formed prior to 2.0 Ga, since when they have
The metacraton was formerly an area of smaller cratonic been tectonically stable. In North Africa remnants of the
and orogenic fragments and accreted terranes which suf- West African craton are found in the Eglab Mountains of
fered very high grade metamorphism and remobilisation Algeria, and in Mali and Burkino Faso. These areas have
during the final stages of the Pan-African orogeny, and yielded radiometric age dates attributable to the Archaean
which in consequence is not easy to interpret (Fig. 2.1).1 and early Proterozoic. Palaeomagnetic data show that the
 2.4 The Pan-African Orogeny and the Assembly of Pannotia 37

60°N

Australia S. 30°N
India China Siberia
Sey.

Mad. Antarctica

Laurentia
Mozambique
0°
Ocean
Baltica
Kalahari
Rio
Congo- Plata
Sao Francisco Amazonia
Brasiliano
Ocean 30°S

West
Africa

60°S

Rodinia at 750 Ma Source: Modified from Meert et al. (2008)

Key
Neoproterozoic rifts
Direction of plate
movement in late
Proterozoic

FIG. 2.2 The Rodinia Super-Continent.

Rodinia was assembled from cratonic nuclei during the Proterozoic with Laurentia at its core. The African cratons were widely separated and
peripheral to the main mass of Rodinia. It began to break-up about 750 Ma along rift zones which developed into the Pharusian and Adamastor
oceans.

three principal cratons were widely separated during the
Proterozoic. It is now evident that many of the world’s
cratons came together during the Neoproterozoic to form
a super-continent which has been named Rodinia, a term
coined in 1989 to reflect the ancestral nature of this group-
ing. There is general agreement that Rodinia was assem-
bled between 2.0 and 1.1 Ga and broke apart from around
750 Ma. It was centred on the Laurentian craton which was
surrounded in a clockwise direction by the ancient cratons
of Antarctica, India, Australia, South China, Siberia, Baltica,
Amazonia and Rio Plata. The striking feature of this asso-
ciation is the absence of the three African cratons. This is
because they were peripheral to the main mass of Rodinia.
The West African craton was attached to the outer margin
of Amazonia, the Kalahari craton lay adjacent to Laurentia
and Antarctica, and the Sao Francisco, Congo and Kalahari
cratons formed part of a small agglomeration of cratons
which were probably separated from the main mass of
Rodinia by open ocean (Fig. 2.2).2
2.4 THE PAN-AFRICAN OROGENY AND
THE ASSEMBLY OF PANNOTIA
From about 750 Ma Rodinia began to break up. The
Pharusian, Adamastor, Damara and East African oceans
developed along rift zones, splitting Rodinia into frag-
ments. Island arcs formed in these oceans and northern
Libya is floored with the remains of one of these island
arcs from the Pharusian Ocean. Rocks of this suite are
found at outcrop in the western Hoggar mountains in
Algeria. From 650 Ma however the oceans began to close
38 2. Plate Tectonic History

lia
ra
Antarctica Laurentia

st
Au
0°

Kalahari
India Craton

Siber
°S Rio
Plata
30

Craton

ia
Madagascar

Arabia Congo
Craton
Sao
°S

Amazonia
60

Francisco
Craton Craton
Baltica
Sahara
Metacraton West
African
Craton

Avalonia

Pannotia at 545 Ma Source: Kroner and Stern (2004); Abdelsalam et al. (2002); Dalziel (1997)
FIG. 2.3 The Pannotia Super-Continent.
From 650 to 600 Ma the African cratons came together and were forced into the heart of Rodinia, closing the Pharusian and Adamastor oceans
and forming orogenic belts between the cratons. This marked the culmination of the Pan-African orogeny and produced a new super-continent
named Pannotia.

and the West African, Congo, Sao Francisco and Kalahari
cratons were brought together by plate tectonic move-
ments, and forced bodily into the heart of Rodinia, dis-
placing the former core of Laurentia into a peripheral
position. This has colourfully been described as Rodinia
turned inside out. The intense forces created by these
events produced the Pan-African orogeny during which
the Pharusian, Adamastor, Damara and East African
oceans were closed, and their remains transformed into
orogenic belts, and large areas of crust were remobilised.
A peripheral expression of the orogeny was the a­ ccretion
of the Avalonian and Cadomian island arcs onto the
margin of the reorganised super-continent along a
subduction zone, an episode known as the Cadomian
orogeny. The reorganised assemblage of plates formed
a new, second, super-continent which has been given
the name Pannotia, meaning all southern lands, since
all of the major cratons were located south of the equa-
tor. Africa and South America were inverted in terms
of modern geography. West Africa was located at the
South Pole whilst South Africa was at a latitude of about
30° south (Fig. 2.3). Pannotia has also been described
as Greater Gondwana since it contained all the cratons
of the Palaeozoic Gondwana continent plus Laurentia,
Siberia and Baltica. The orogeny had profound effects
throughout Africa and resulted in intense deformation.
It was responsible for bringing together the three ancient
African cratons into a configuration which has remained
unchanged to the present day.3
The Pannotia super-continent had a relatively brief
existence. During the earliest Palaeozoic it broke apart
along the lines of the Neoproterozoic sutures, and
Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia became detached to form
separate entities, which remained discrete for the next
200 million years. The remaining continental assemblage,
at this time extending from the South Pole to about 60°
 2.5 The Saharan Metacraton
south and comprising Africa, Antarctica, South America,
Australia and India, is named Gondwana, after a region
in India where the distinctive palaeofloral assemblage
which characterises it was first described (Fig. 2.3).4
2.5 THE SAHARAN METACRATON
The area between the Hoggar Shield and the Arabian-
Nubian Shield and southwards to the Congo craton
is neither a craton nor an orogenic belt. It is an area of
Neoproterozoic and Proterozoic crust which was exten-
sively remobilised, injected and fragmented during the
Pan-African orogeny, making its origins difficult to deci-
pher. Formerly, exposed areas of these rocks were referred
to as Nile Craton and East Saharan Craton, but these
terms are misleading because they are not cratons and the
geographic names are not entirely accurate. In 2002 it was
39
proposed to rename this melange the Saharan Metacraton.
The area has a complex history involving decratonisation,
accretion, extension, and remobilisation (Fig. 2.4).5
In Libya there are only a few areas where these
rocks are exposed, but many wells have penetrated the
Phanerozoic cover and terminated in basement rocks.
On Jabal Hasawnah on the Qarqaf Arch there are five
small inliers of Precambrian granite and granodiorite,
and on the western flank of the Al Haruj al Aswad sim-
ilar rocks, along with metamorphosed Neoproterozoic
sediments, are exposed near Tmassah. Isotopic studies
of these rocks yield ages of 586–533 Ma. The principal
exposures of basement rocks are in the south. South-
west of Ghat, just over the border in Algeria, large areas
of Precambrian granite with patches of Neoproterozoic
metasediments are exposed in the axis of the Tihimboka
Arch, and similar assemblages outcrop extensively
in the western Tibisti mountains along the southern

10°W 50°E
35°N

Reguibat
Shield Libya

Ar bia
Nu
ab n
Hoggar

ian
Shield

-
Sh

West
iel

Saharan
d

African
Craton Metacraton

East
? African 5°N
Orogenic
Belt
Equator Congo Craton

Key
Major boundaries

Phanerozoic formations

Pan-African juvenile crust

Remobilised during Pan-African orogeny

Cratonic basement

Source: Redrawn from Meinhold et al. (2011)

FIG. 2.4 The Saharan Metacraton.
The effect of the Pan-African orogeny in north Africa was profound. The small cratonic fragments, intervening orogenic belts and accreted island
arcs were subjected to extreme remobilisation, so that the original components are difficult to differentiate. This assemblage is named the Saharan
Metacraton.
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while in that city. They found, that, during their absence, the mother-
in-law of Simon had been taken ill, and was then suffering under the
heat of a violent fever. Jesus at once, with a word, pronounced her
cure, and immediately the fever left her so perfectly healed, that she
arose from her sick bed, and proceeded to welcome their return, by
her grateful efforts to make their home comfortable to them, after
their tiresome pilgrimage.

“Immediately the fever left her.”――Matthew viii. 15: Mark i. 31: Luke iv. 39. It may seem
quite idle to conjecture the specific character of this fever; but it seems to me a very
justifiable guess, that it was a true intermittent, or fever and ague, arising from the marsh
influences, which must have been very strong in such a place as Capernaum,――situated
as it was, on the low margin of a large fresh water lake, and with all the morbific agencies of
such an unhealthy site, increased by the heat of that climate. The immediate termination of
the fever, under these circumstances, was an abundant evidence of the divine power of
Christ’s word, over the evil agencies, which mar the health and happiness of mankind.

During some time after this, Peter does not seem to have left his
home for any long period at once, until Christ’s long journeys to
Judea and Jerusalem, but no doubt accompanied Jesus on all his
excursions through Galilee, besides the first, of which the history has
been here given. It would be hard, and exceedingly unsatisfactory,
however, to attempt to draw out from the short, scattered incidents
which fill the interesting records of the gospels, any very distinct,
detailed narrative of these various journeys. The chronology and
order of most of these events, is still left much in the dark, and most
of the pains taken to bring out the truth to the light, have only raised
the greater dust to blind the eyes of the eager investigator. To
pretend to roll all these clouds away at once, and open to common
eyes a clear view of facts, which have so long confused the minds of
some of the wisest and best of almost every Christian age, and too
often, alas! in turn, been confused by them,――such an effort,
however well meant, could only win for its author the contempt of the
learned, and the perplexed dissatisfaction of common readers. But
one very simple, and comparatively easy task, is plainly before the
writer, and to that he willingly devotes himself for the present. This
task is, that of separating and disposing, in what may seem their
natural order, with suitable illustration and explanation, those few
facts contained in the gospels, relating distinctly to this apostle.
These facts, accordingly, here follow.

his first mission.

The next affair in which Peter is mentioned, by either evangelist, is

the final enrolling of the twelve peculiar disciples, to whom Jesus
gave the name of apostles. In their proper place have already been
mentioned, both the meaning of this title and the rank of Peter on the
list; and it need here only be remarked, that Peter went forth with the
rest, on this their first and experimental mission. All the first three
gospels contain this account; but Matthew enters most fully into the
charge of Jesus, in giving them their first commission. In his tenth
chapter, this charge is given with such particularity, that a mere
reference of the reader to that place will be sufficient, without any
need of explanation here. After these minute directions for their
behavior, they departed, as Mark and Luke record, and went through
the towns, preaching the gospel, that men should repent. And they
cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and
healed them. How far their journey extended, cannot be positively
determined, but there is no probability that they went beyond the
limits of Galilee. Divided as they were into couples, and each pair
taking a different route, a large space must have been gone over in
this mission, however brief the time can be supposed to have been.
As to the exact time occupied, we are, indeed, as uncertain as in
respect to the distance to which they traveled; but from the few
incidents placed by Mark and Luke between their departure and
return, it could hardly have been more than a few weeks, probably
only a few days. The only affair mentioned by either evangelist,
between their departure and return, is, the notice taken by Herod of
the actions of Jesus, to whom his attention was drawn by his
resemblance to John the Baptist. They then say, that the apostles,
when they were returned, gathered themselves together to Jesus,
and told him all things,――both what they had done and what they
had taught. As this report was received by Jesus, without any
comment that is recorded, it is fair to conclude, that their manner of
preaching, and the success of their labors, had been such as to
deserve his approbation. In this mission, there is nothing particularly
commemorated with respect to Peter’s conduct; but no doubt the
same fiery zeal which distinguished him afterwards, on so many
occasions, made him foremost in this his earliest apostolic labor. His
rank, as chief apostle, too, probably gave him some prominent part
in the mission, and his field of operations must have been more
important and extensive than that of the inferior apostles, and his
success proportionably greater.

It is deserving of notice, that on this first mission, Jesus seems to have arranged the
twelve in pairs, in which order he probably sent them forth, as he certainly did the seventy
disciples, described in Luke x. 1. The object of this arrangement, was no doubt to secure
them that mutual support which was so desirable for men, so unaccustomed to the high
duties on which they were now dispatched.

Their destination, also, deserves attention. The direction of Jesus was, that they should
avoid the way of the heathen, and the cities of the Samaritans, who were but little better,
and should go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This expression was quoted,
probably, from those numerous passages in the prophets, where this term is applied to the
Israelites, as in Jeremiah l. 6, Isaiah liii. 6, Ezekiel xxxiv. 6, &c., and was used with peculiar
force, in reference to the condition of those to whom Jesus sent his apostles. It seems to
me, as if he, by this peculiar term, meant to limit them to the provinces of Galilee, where the
state and character of the Jews was such as eminently to justify this melancholy appellative.
The particulars of their condition will be elsewhere shown. They were expressly bounded on
one side, from passing into the heathen territory, and on the other from entering the cities of
the Samaritans, who dwelt between Galilee and Judea proper, so that a literal obedience of
these instructions, would have confined them entirely to Galilee, their native land. Macknight
also takes this view. The reasons of this limitation, are abundant and obvious. The
peculiarly abandoned moral condition of that outcast section of Palestine,――the perfect
familiarity which the apostles must have felt with the people of their own region, whose
peculiarities of language and habits they themselves shared so perfectly as to be unfitted
for a successful outset among the Jews of the south, without more experience out of
Galilee,――the shortness of the time, which seems to have been taken up in this
mission,――the circumstance that Jesus sent them to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven
was at hand,” that is, that the Messiah was approaching, which he did in order to arouse the
attention of the people to himself, when he should go to them, (compare Luke x. 1,) thus
making them his forerunners; and the fact, that the places to which he actually did go with
them, on their return, were all in Galilee, (Matthew xi., xix. 1, Mark vi. 7, x. 1, Luke ix. 1‒51,)
all serve to show that this first mission of the apostles, was limited entirely to the Jewish
population of Galilee. His promise to them also in Matthew x. 2, 3, “you shall not finish the
cities of Israel, before the son of man come,” seems to me to mean simply, that there would
be no occasion for them to extend their labors to the Gentile cities of Galilee, or to the
Samaritans; because, before they could finish their specially allotted field of survey, he
himself would be ready to follow them, and confirm their labors. This was mentioned to
them in connection with the prediction of persecutions which they would meet, as an
encouragement. For various other explanations of this last passage, see Poole’s Synopsis,
Rosenmueller, Wetstein, Macknight, Le Sainte Bible avec notes, &c. in loc. But Kuinoel,
who quotes on his side Beza, Bolten, and others, supports the view, which an unassisted
consideration induced me to suggest.

“Anointed with oil.” Mark vi. 13. The same expression occurs in James v. 14, and needs
explanation from its connection with a peculiar rite of the Romish church,――extreme
unction, from which it differs, however, inasmuch as it was always a hopeful operation,
intended to aid the patient, and secure his recovery, while the Romish ceremony is always
performed in case of complete despair of life, only with a view to prepare the patient, by this
mummery, for certain death. The operation mentioned as so successfully performed by the
apostles, for the cure of diseases, was undoubtedly a simple remedial process, previously
in long-established use among the Hebrews, as clearly appears by the numerous
authorities quoted by Lightfoot, Wetstein, and Paulus, from Rabbinical Greek and Arabic
sources; yet Beza and others, quoted in Poole’s Synopsis, as well as Rosenmueller,
suggest some symbolical force in the ceremony, for which see those works in loc. See also
Kuinoel, and Bloomfield who gives numerous references. See also Marlorat’s Bibliotheca
expositionum, Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, Whitby, &c.

the scenes on the lake.

After receiving the report of his apostles’ labors, Jesus said to

them, “Come ye yourselves apart into a retired place, and rest
awhile:” for there were many coming and going, and they had no
leisure so much as to eat. And he took them and went privately by
ship aside, into a lonely place, near the city called Bethsaida. And
the people saw him departing, and many knew him, and went on foot
to the place, out of all the country, and outwent them, and came
together to him as soon as he reached there. And he received them,
and spoke unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that
had need of healing. It was on this occasion that he performed the
miracle of feeding the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. So
great was the impression made on their minds by this extraordinary
act of benevolence and power, that he thought it best, in order to
avoid the hindrance of his great task, by any popular commotion in
his favor, to go away in such a manner as to be effectually beyond
their reach for the time.――With this view he constrained his
disciples to get into the ship, and go before him to the other side of
the lake, opposite to Bethsaida, where they then were; while he sent
away the people. After sending the multitude away, he went up into a
mountain, apart, to pray. And after night fall, the vessel was in the
midst of the sea, and he alone on the land. Thence he saw them
toiling with rowing, (for the wind was contrary to them, and the ship
tossed in the waves:) and about three or four o’clock in the morning,
he comes to them, walking on the sea, and appeared as if about to
pass unconcernedly by them. But when they saw him walking upon
the sea. they supposed it to have been a spirit, and they all cried out,
“It is a spirit;” for they all saw him, and were alarmed; and
immediately he spoke to them, and said “Be comforted; it is I; be not
afraid.” And Peter, foremost in zeal on this occasion, as at almost all
times, said to him, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee upon the
water.” And he said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of
the vessel, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw
the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried,
“Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand,
and caught him; and said to him, “O thou of little faith! wherefore
didst thou doubt?” And when they were come into the ship, the wind
ceased; and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure,
and wondered. And all they that were in the vessel came and
worshiped him, saying, “Of a truth, thou art the Son of God.” This
amazement and reverence was certainly very tardily acknowledged
by them, after all the wonders they had seen wrought by him; but
they considered not the miracle of the loaves, the most recent of all,
which happened but a few hours before. For this thoughtlessness, in
a matter so striking and weighty, Jesus himself afterwards rebuked
them, referring both to this miracle of feeding the five thousand, and
to a subsequent similar one. However, the various great actions of a
similar character, thus repeated before them, seem at last to have
had a proper effect, since, on an occasion not long after, they boldly
and clearly made their profession of faith in Jesus, as the Christ.

“A lonely place.”――The word desert, which is the adjective given in this passage, in the
common English version, (Matthew xiv. 13, 15, Mark vi. 31, 32, 35, Luke ix. 10, 12,) does
not convey to the reader, the true idea of the character of the place. The Greek word Ερημος
(eremos) does not in the passages just quoted, mean “desert,” in our modern sense of that
English word, which always conveys the idea of “desolation,” “wildness” and “barrenness,”
as well as “solitude.” But the Greek word by no means implied these darker characteristics.
The primary, uniform idea of the word is, “lonely,” “solitary,” and so little does it imply
“barrenness,” that it is applied to lands, rich, fertile and pleasant, a connection, of course,
perfectly inconsistent with our ideas of a desert place. Schleusner gives the idea very fairly
under Ερημια, (eremia,) a derivative of this word. “Notat locum aliquem vel tractum terrae,
non tam incultum et horridum, quam minus habitabilem,――solitudinem,――locum vacuum
quidem ab hominibus, pascuis tamen et agris abundantem, et arboribus obsitum.” “It means
a place or tract of land, not so much uncultivated and wild, as it does one thinly
inhabited,――a solitude, a place empty of men indeed, yet rich in pastures and fields, and
planted with trees.” But after giving this very clear and satisfactory account of the derivative,
he immediately after gives to the primitive itself, the primary meaning “desertus, desolatus,
vastus, devastatus,” and refers to passages where the word is applied to ruined cities; but in
every one of those passages, the true idea is that above given as the meaning, “stripped of
inhabitants,” and not “desolated” or “laid waste.” Hedericus gives this as the first meaning,
“desertus, solus, solitarius, inhabitatus.” Schneider also fully expresses it, in German, by
“einsam,” (lonely, solitary,) in which he is followed by Passow, his improver, and by
Donnegan, his English translator. Jones and Pickering, also give it thus. Bretschneider and
Wahl, in their New Testament Lexicons, have given a just and proper classification of the
meanings. The word “desert” came into our English translation, by the minute verbal
adherence of the translators to the Vulgate or Latin version, where the word is expressed by
“desertum” probably enough because desertus, in Latin, does not mean desert in English,
nor any thing like it, but simply “lonely,” “uninhabited;”――in short, it has the force of the
English participle, “deserted,” and not of the adjective “desert,” which has probably acquired
its modern meaning, and lost its old one, since our common translation was made; thus
making one instance, among ten thousand others, of the imperfection of this ancient
translation, which was, at best, but a servile English rendering of the Vulgate. Campbell, in
his four gospels, has repeated this passage, without correcting the error, though Hammond,
long before, in his just and beautiful paraphrase, (on Matthew xiv. 13,) had corrected it by
the expression, “a place not inhabited.” Charles Thomson, in his version, has overlooked
the error in Matthew xiv. 13, 15, but has corrected it in Mark vi. 31, &c., and in Luke ix. 10;
expressing it by “solitary.” The remark of the apostles to Jesus, “This place is lonely,” does
not require the idea of a barren or wild place; it was enough that it was far from any village,
and had not inhabitants enough to furnish food for five thousand men; as in 2 Corinthians xi.
26, it is used in opposition to “city,” in the sense of “the country.”

his declaration of christ’s divinity.

Journeying on northward, Jesus came into the neighborhood of

♦Caesarea Philippi, and while he was there in some solitary place,
praying alone with his select disciples, at the conclusion of his
prayer, he asked them, “Who do men say that I, the son of man,
am?” And they answered him, “Some say that thou art John the
Baptist:” Herod, in particular, we know, had this notion; “some, that
thou art Elijah, and others that thou art Jeremiah, or one of the
prophets, that is risen again.” So peculiar was his doctrine, and so
far removed was he, both in impressive eloquence and in original
views, from the degeneracy and servility of that age, that the
universal sentiment was, that one of the bold, pure “spirits of the
fervent days of old,” had come back to call Judah from foreign
servitude, to the long remembered glories of the reigns of David and
Solomon. But his chosen ones, who had by repeated instruction, as
well as long acquaintance, better learned their Master, though still far
from appreciating his true character and designs, had yet a higher
and juster idea of him, than the unenlightened multitudes who had
been amazed by his deeds. To draw from them the distinct
acknowledgment of their belief in him, Jesus at last plainly asked his
disciples, “But who do ye say that I am?” Simon Peter, in his usual
character as spokesman, replied for the whole band, “Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus, recognizing in this prompt
answer, the fiery and devoted spirit that would follow the great work
of redemption through life, and at last to death, replied to the zealous
speaker in terms of marked and exalted honor, prophesying at the
same time the high part which he would act in spreading and
strengthening the kingdom of his Master: “Blessed art thou, Simon,
son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this unto thee,
but my Father who is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, that thou
art a rock, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of the
kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be
loosed in heaven.” In such high terms was the chief apostle
distinguished, and thus did his Master peculiarly commission him
above the rest, for the high office, to which all the energies of his
remaining life were to be devoted.

♦ “Cesarea” replaced with “Caesarea”

Who do men say that I am.――The common English translation, here makes a gross
grammatical blunder, putting the relative in the objective case,――“Whom do men say,” &c.
(Matthew xvi. 13‒15.) It is evident that on inverting the order, putting the relative last instead
of first, it will be in the nominative,――“Men say that I am who?” making, in short, a
nominative after the verb, though it here comes before it by the inversion which the relative
requires. Here again the blunder may be traced to a heedless copying of the Vulgate. In
Latin, as in Greek, the relative is given in the accusative, and very properly, because it is
followed by the infinitive. “Quem dicunt homines esse Filium hominis?” which literally is,
“Whom do men say the son of man to be?”――a very correct form of expression; but the
blunder of our translators was, in preserving the accusative, while they changed the verb,
from the infinitive to the finite form; for “whom” cannot be governed by “say.” Hammond has
passed over the blunder; but Campbell, Thomson, and Webster, have corrected it.

Son of Man.――This expression has acquired a peculiarly exalted sense in our minds,
in consequence of its repeated application to Jesus Christ, and its limitation to him, in the
New Testament. But in those days it had no meaning by which it could be considered
expressive of any peculiar characteristic of the Savior, being a mere general emphatic
expression for the common word “man,” used in solemn address or poetical expressions.
Both in the Old and New Testament it is many times applied to men in general, and to
particular individuals, in such a way as to show that it was only an elegant periphrasis for
the common term, without implying any peculiar importance in the person thus designated,
or referring to any peculiar circumstance as justifying this appellative in that case. Any
concordance will show how commonly the word occurred in this connection. The diligent
Butterworth enumerates eighty-nine times in which this word is applied to Ezekiel, in whose
book of prophecy it occurs oftener than in any other book in the Bible. It is also applied to
Daniel, in the address of the angel to him, as to Ezekiel; and in consideration of the vastly
more frequent occurrence of the expression in the writers after the captivity, and its
exclusive use by them as a formula of solemn address, it has been commonly considered
as having been brought into this usage among the Hebrews, from the dialects of Chaldea
and Syria, where it was much more common. In Syriac, more particularly, the simple
expression, “man,” is entirely banished from use by this solemn periphrasis, (bar-
nosh,) “son of man,” which every where takes the place of the original direct form. It should
be noticed also, that in every place in the Old Testament where this expression (“son of
man”) occurs, before Ezekiel, the former part of the sentence invariably contains the direct
form of expression, (“man,”) and this periphrasis is given in the latter part of every such
sentence, for the sake of a poetical repetition of the same idea in a slightly different form.
Take, for instance, Psalm viii. 4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of
man, that thou visitest him?” And exactly so in every other passage anterior to Ezekiel, as
Numbers xxiii. 19, Job xxv. 16, xxxv. 8, Isaiah li. 12, lvi. 2, and several other passages, to
which any good concordance will direct the reader.

The New Testament writers too, apply this expression in other ways than as a name of
Jesus Christ. It is given as a mere periphrasis, entirely synonymous with “man,” in a general
or abstract sense, without reference to any particular individual, in Mark iii. 28, (compare
Matthew xii. 13, where the simple expression “men” is given,) Hebrews ii. 6, (a mere
translation of Psalm viii. 4,) Ephesians iii. 5, Revelation i. 13, xiv. 14. In the peculiar
emphatic limitation to which this note refers, it is applied by Jesus Christ to himself about
eighty times in the gospels, but is never used by any other person in the New Testament, as
a name of the Savior, except by Stephen, in Acts, vii. 56. It never occurs in this sense in the
apostolic epistles. (Bretschneider.) For this use of the word, I should not think it necessary
to seek any mystical or important reason, as so many have done, nor can I see that in its
application to Jesus, it has any very direct reference to the circumstance of his having,
though divine, put on a human nature, but simply a nobly modest and strikingly emphatic
form of expression used by him, in speaking of his own exalted character and mighty plans,
and partly to avoid the too frequent repetition of the personal pronoun. It is at once evident
that this indirect form, in the third person, is both more dignified and modest in solemn
address, than the use of the first person singular of the pronoun. Exactly similar to this are
many forms of circumlocution with which we are familiar. The presiding officer of any great
deliberative assembly, for instance, in announcing his own decision on points of order, by a
similar periphrasis, says “The chair decides,” &c. In fashionable forms of intercourse, such
instances are still more frequent. In many books, where the writer has occasion to speak of
himself, he speaks in the third person, “the author,” &c.; as in an instance close at hand, in
this book it will be noticed, that where it is necessary for me to allude to myself in the text of
the work, which, of course, is more elevated in its tone than the notes, I speak, according to
standard forms of scriptorial propriety, in the third person, as “the author,” &c.; while here, in
these small discussions, which break in on the more dignified narrative, I find it at once
more convenient and proper, to use the more familiar and simple forms of ♦expression.

♦ “expresssion” replaced with “expression”

This periphrasis (“son of”) is not peculiar to oriental languages, as every Greek scholar
knows, who is familiar with Homer’s common expression υιες Αχαιων, (uies Akhaion,) “sons
of Grecians,” instead of “Grecians” simply, which by a striking coincidence, occurs in Joel
xiii. 6, in the same sense. Other instances might be needlessly ♦multiplied.

♦ “multipled” replaced with “multiplied”

Thou art a Rock, &c.――This is the just translation of Peter’s name, and the force of the
declaration is best understood by this rendering. As it stands in the original, it is “Thou art
Πετρος, (Petros, ‘a rock,’) and on this Πετρα (Petra, ‘a rock’) I will build my church,”――a
play on the words so palpable, that great injustice is done to its force by a common tame,
unexplained translation. The variation of the words in the Greek, from the masculine to the
feminine termination, makes no difference in the expression. In the Greek Testament, the
feminine πετρα (petra) is the only form of the word used as the common noun for “rock,” but
the masculine πετρος (petros) is used in the most finished classic writers of the ancient
Greek, of the Ionic, Doric and Attic, as Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, Xenophon, and, in the
later order of writers, Diodorus Siculus.

H. Stephens gives the masculine form as the primitive, but Schneider derives it from the
feminine.

After this distinct profession of faith in him, by his disciples,

through Peter, Jesus particularly and solemnly charged them all, that
they should not, then, assert their belief to others, lest they should
thereby be drawn into useless and unfortunate contests about their
Master, with those who entertained a very different opinion of him.
For Jesus knew that his disciples, shackled and possessed as they
were with their fantasies about the earthly reign of a Messiah, were
not, as yet, sufficiently prepared to preach this doctrine: and wisely
foresaw that the mass of the Jewish people would either put no faith
at all in such an announcement, or that the ill disposed and
ambitious would abuse it, to the purposes of effecting a political
revolution, by raising a rebellion against the Roman rulers of
Palestine, and oversetting foreign power. He had, it is true, already
sent forth his twelve apostles, to preach the coming of the kingdom,
(Matthew x. 7,) but that was only to the effect that the time of the
Messiah’s reign was nigh,――that the lives and hearts of all must be
changed,――all which the apostles might well preach, without
pretending to announce who the Messiah was.

his ambitious hopes and their humiliation.

This avowal of Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Messiah, to which
the other apostles gave their assent, silent or loud, was so clear and
hearty, that Jesus plainly perceived their persuasion of his divine
authority to be so strong, that they might now bear a decisive and
open explanation of those things which he had hitherto rather darkly
and dimly hinted at, respecting his own death. He also at this time,
brought out the full truth the more clearly as to the miseries which
hung over him, and his expected death, with the view the more
effectually to overthrow those false notions which they had
preconceived of earthly happiness and triumph, to be expected in
the Messiah’s kingdom; and with the view, also, of preparing them
for the events which must shortly happen; lest, after they saw him
nailed to the cross, they should all at once lose their high hopes, and
utterly give him up. He knew too, that he had such influence with his
disciples, that if their minds were shocked, and their faith in him
shaken, at first, by such a painful disclosure, he could soon bring
them back to a proper confidence in him. Accordingly, from this time,
he began distinctly to set forth to them, how he must go to
Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, and chief priests,
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. There is
much room for reasonable doubt, as to the manner in which those
who heard this declaration of Christ, understood it at the time. As to
the former part of it, namely, that he would be ill-treated by the great
men of the Jewish nation, both by those ruling in the civil and
religious government, it was too plain for any one to put any but the
right meaning upon it. But the promise that he should, after this
horrible fate, rise again from the dead on the third day, did not, as it
is evident, by any means convey to them the meaning which all who
read it now, are able to find in it. Nothing can be more plain to a
careful reader of the gospels, than that his disciples and friends had
not the slightest expectation that he would ever appear to them after
his cruel death; and the mingled horror and dread with which the first
news of that event was received by them, shows them to have been
utterly unprepared for it. It required repeated positive demonstration,
on his part, to assure them that he was truly alive among them, in his
own form and character. The question then is――what meaning had
they all along given to the numerous declarations uttered by him to
them, apparently foretelling this, in the distinct terms, of which the
above passage is a specimen? Had they understood it as we do,
and yet so absolutely disbelieved it, that they put no faith in the event
itself, when it had so palpably occurred? And had they, for months
and years, followed over Palestine, through labors, and troubles, and
dangers, a man, who, as they supposed, was boldly endeavoring to
saddle their credulity with a burden too monstrous for even them to
bear? They must, from the nature of their connection with him, have
put the most unlimited confidence in him, and could not thus
devotedly have given themselves up to a man whom they believed
or suspected to be constantly uttering to them a falsehood so
extravagant and improbable. They must, then, have put some
meaning on it, different from that which our clearer light enables us
to see in it; and that meaning, no doubt, they honestly and firmly
believed, until the progress of events showed them the power of the
prophecy in its wonderful and literal fulfilment. They may have
misunderstood it in his life time, in this way: the universal character
of the language of the children of Shem, seems to be a remarkable
proneness to figurative expressions, and the more abstract the ideas
which the speaker wishes to convey, the more strikingly material are
the figures he uses, and the more poetical the language in which he
conveys them. Teachers of morals and religion, most especially,
have, among those nations of the east, been always distinguished
for their highly figurative expressions, and none abound more richly
in them than the writers of the Old and New Testament. So peculiarly
effective, for his great purposes, did Jesus Christ, in particular, find
this variety of eloquence, that it is distinctly said of him, that he
seldom or never spoke to the people without a parable, which he
was often obliged to expound more in detail, to his chosen followers,
when apart with them. This style of esoteric and exoteric instruction,
had early taught his disciples to look into his most ordinary
expressions for a hidden meaning; and what can be more likely than
that often, when left to their own conjectures, they, for a time, at
least, overleaped the simple literal truth, into a fog of figurative
interpretations, as too many of their very modern successors have
often done, to their own and others’ misfortune. We certainly know
that, in regard to those very expressions about raising the dead,
there was a very earnest inquiry among the three chief apostles,
some time after, as will be mentioned in place, showing that it never
seemed possible to them that their Lord, mighty as he had showed
himself, could ever mean to say to them, that, when his bitter foes
had crowned his life of toil and cares with a bloody and cruel exit,
he――even He, could dare to promise them, that he would break
through that iron seal, which, when once set upon the energies of
man, neither goodness, nor valor, nor knowledge, nor love, had ever
loosened, but which, since the first dead yielded his breath, not the
mightiest prophet, nor the most inspired, could ever break through
for himself. The figure of death and resurrection, has often been
made a striking image of many moral changes;――of some one of
which, the hearers of Jesus probably first interpreted it. In connection
with what he had previously said, nothing could seem more natural
to them, than that he, by this peculiarly strong metaphor, wished to
remind them that, even after his death, by the envious and cruel
hands of Jewish magistrates, over but a few days, his name, the
ever fresh influence of his bright and holy example――the undying
powers of his breathing and burning words, should still live with
them, and with them triumph after the momentary struggles of the
enemies of the truth.

The manner, also, in which Simon Peter received this

communication, shows that he could not have anticipated so glorious
and dazzling a result of such horrible evils: for, however literally he
may have taken the prophecy of Christ’s cruel death, he used all his
powers to dissuade his adored master from exposing himself to a
fate so dark and dreadful,――so sadly destructive of all the new-
born hopes of his chosen followers, and from which the conclusion of
the prophecy seemed to offer no clear or certain mode of escape.
Never before, had Jesus spoken in such plain and decided terms,
about the prospect of his own terrible death. Peter, whose heart had
just been lifted up to the skies with joy and hope, in the prospect of
the glorious triumphs to be achieved by his Lord through his means,
and whose thoughts were even then dwelling on the honors, the
power, the fame, which were to accrue to him for his share in the
splendid work,――was shocked beyond measure, at the strange and
seemingly contradictory view of the results, now taken by his great
leader. With the confident familiarity to which their mutual love and
intimacy entitled him, in some measure, he laid his hand
expostulatingly upon him, and drew him partly aside, to urge him
privately to forget thoughts of despondency, so unworthy of the great
enterprise of Israel’s restoration, to which they had all so manfully
pledged themselves as his supporters. We may presume, that he, in
a tone of encouragement, endeavored to show him how impossible it
would be for the dignitaries of Jerusalem to withstand the tide of
popularity which had already set so strongly in favor of Jesus; that so
far from looking upon himself as in danger of a death so infamous,
from the Sanhedrim, he might, at the head of the hosts of his
zealous Galileans, march as a conqueror to Jerusalem, and thence
give laws from the throne of his father David, to all the wide
territories of that far-ruling king. Such dreams of earthly glory
seemed to have filled the soul of Peter at that time; and we cannot
wonder, then, that every ambitious feeling within him recoiled at the
gloomy announcement, that the idol of his hopes was to end his
days of unrequited toil, by a death so infamous as that of the cross.
“Be it far from thee, Lord,” “God forbid,” “Do not say so,” “Do not thus
damp our courage and high hopes,” “This must not happen to
thee.”――Jesus, on hearing these words of ill-timed rebuke, which
showed how miserably his chief follower had been infatuated and
misled, by his foolish and carnal ambition, turned away indignantly
from the low and degraded motives, by which Peter sought to bend
him from his holy purposes. Not looking upon him, but upon the
other disciples, who had kept their feelings of regret and
disappointment to themselves, he, in the most energetic terms,
expressed his abhorrence of such notions, by his language to the
speaker. “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me; for
thou savorest not the things which be of God, but the things which
be of men. In these fervent aspirations after eminence, I recognize
none of the pure devotion to the good of man, which is the sure test
of the love of God; but the selfish desire for transient, paltry
distinction, which characterizes the vulgar ambition of common men,
enduring no toil or pain, but in the hope of a more than equal earthly
reward speedily accruing.” After this stern reply, which must have
strongly impressed them all with the nature of the mistake of which
they had been guilty, he addressed them still further, in continuation
of the same design, of correcting their false notion of the earthly
advantages to be expected by his companions in toil. He
immediately gave them a most untempting picture of the character
and conduct of him, who could be accepted as a fit fellow-worker
with Jesus. “If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny
himself, and let him take up his cross, (as if we should say, let him
come with his halter around his neck, and with the gibbet on his
shoulder,) and follow me. For whosoever shall save his life for my
sake, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall
find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of
his Father, with his angels; and then, he shall reward every man
according to his works.” “I solemnly tell you, there are some standing
here who shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man
coming in his kingdom.”――“In vain would you, in pursuit of your idle
dreams of earthly glory, yield up all the powers of your soul, and
spend your life for an object so worthless. After all, what is there in
all the world, if you should have the whole at your disposal――what,
for the momentary enjoyment of which, you can calmly pay down
your soul as the price? Seek not, then, for rewards so unworthy of
the energies which I have recognized in you, and have devoted to far
nobler purposes. Higher honors will crown your toils and sufferings,
in my service;――nobler prizes are seen near, with the eye of faith.
Speedily will the frail monuments of this world’s wonders crumble,
and the memory of its greatnesses pass away; but over the ruins of
kingdoms, the coming of the Man to whom you have joined
yourselves is sure, and in that triumphant advent, you shall find the
imperishable requital of your faithful and zealous works. And of the
nature and aspect of the glories which I now so dimly shadow in
words, some of those who now hear me shall soon be the living
witnesses, as of a foretaste of rewards, whose full enjoyment can be
yours, only after the weariness and misery of this poor life are all
passed. Years of toil, dangers, pain, and sorrow,――lives passed in
contempt and disgrace,――deaths of ignominy, of unpitied anguish,
and lingering torture, must be your passage to the joys of which I
speak; while the earthly honors which you now covet, shall for ages
continue to be the prize of the base, the cruel, and the foolish, from
whom you vainly hope to snatch them.”

the transfiguration.

The mysterious promise thus made by Jesus, of a new and

peculiar exhibition of himself, to some of his chosen ones, he soon
sought an occasion of executing. About six or eight days after this
remarkable conversation, he took Peter, and the two sons of
Zebedee, James and John, and went with them up into a high
mountain, apart by themselves. As to the name and place of this
mountain, a matter of some interest certainly, there have been two
opinions among those who have attempted to illustrate the
topography of the gospels. The phrase, “a high mountain,” has
instantly brought to the thoughts of most learned readers, Mount
Tabor, famous for several great events in Bible history, which they
have instantly adopted, without considering the place in which the
previous account had left Jesus, which was Caesarea Philippi;
hereafter described as in the farthest northern part of Galilee. Now,
Mount Tabor, however desirable in other particulars, as the scene of
a great event in the life of Jesus, was full seventy miles south of the
place where Jesus had the conversation with his disciples, which led
to the remarkable display which followed a few days after, on the
mountain. It is true, that the intervening period of a week, was
sufficient to enable him to travel this distance with ease; but the
difficulty is, to assign some possible necessity or occasion for such a
journey. Certainly, he needed not to have gone thus far to find a
mountain, for Caesarea Philippi itself stands by the base of Paneas,
which is a part of the great Syrian range of Antilibanus. This great
mountain, or mountain chain, rises directly behind the city, and parts
of it are so high above the peak of Tabor, or any other mountain in
Palestine, as to be covered with snow, even in that warm country.
The original readers of the gospel story, were dwellers in Palestine,
and must have been, for the most part, well acquainted with the
character of the places which were the scenes of the incidents, and
could hardly have been ignorant of the fact, that this splendid city, so
famous as the monument of royal vanity and munificence, was near
the northern end of Palestine, and of course, must have been known
even by those who had never seen it, nor heard it particularly
described, to be very near the great Syrian mountains; so near too,
as to be very high elevated above the cities of the southern country,
since not far from the city gushed out the most distant sources of the
rapid Jordan. But another difficulty, in respect to this journey of
seventy miles to Tabor, is, that while the gospels give no account of
it, it is even contradicted by Mark’s statement, that after departing
from the mountain, he passed through Galilee, and came to
Capernaum, which is between Tabor and Caesarea Philippi, twenty
or thirty miles from the former, and forty or fifty from the latter. Now,
that Jesus Christ spared no exertion of body or mind, in “going about
doing good,” no one can doubt; but that he would spend the strength
devoted to useful purposes, in traveling from one end of Galilee to
the other, for no greater good than to ascend a particular mountain,
and then to travel thirty miles back on the same route, is a most
unnecessary tax upon our faith. But here, close to Caesarea Philippi,
was the mighty range of Antilibanus, known in Hebrew poetry by the
name of Hermon in this part; and He, whose presence made all
places holy, could not have chosen, among all the mountains of
Palestine, one which nature had better fitted to impress the beholder
who stood on the summit, with ideas of the vast and sublime.
Modern travelers assure us that, from the peaks behind the city, the
view of the lower mountains to the south,――of the plain through
which the young Jordan flows, soon spreading out into the broad
sheet of lake Houle, (Samachonitis lacus,) and of the country, almost
to lake Tiberias, is most magnificent. The precise peak which was
the scene of the event here related, it is impossible to conjecture. It
may have been any one of three which are prominent: either the
castle hill, or, farther off and much higher, Mount Bostra, once the
site of a city, or farther still, and highest of all, Merura Jubba, which is
but a few hours walk from the city. The general impression of the
vulgar, however, and of those who take the traditions of the vulgar
and the ignorant, without examination, has been, that Tabor was the
scene of the event, so that, at this day, it is known among the stupid
Christians of Palestine, by the name of the Mount of the
Transfiguration. So idly are these foolish local traditions received,
that this falsehood, so palpable on inspection, has been quietly
handed down from traveler to traveler, ever since the crusades,
when hundreds of these and similar localities, were hunted up so
hastily, and by persons so ill-qualified for the search, that more
modern investigators may be pardoned for treating with so little
consideration the voice of such antiquity, when it is found opposed to
a rational and consistent understanding of the gospel story. When
the question was first asked, “Where is the mount of the
transfiguration?” there were enough persons interested to reply,
“Mount Tabor.” No reason was probably asked for the decision, and
none was given; but as the scene was acted on a high mountain in
Galilee, and as Tabor answered perfectly to this very simple
description, and was moreover interesting on many other accounts,
both historical and natural, it was adopted for the transfiguration
without any discussion whatever, among those on the spot. Still, to
learned and diligent readers of the gospels, the ♦inconsistencies of
such a belief have been so obvious, that many great theologians
have decided, for the reasons here given, that the transfiguration
must have taken place on some part of Mount Paneas, as it was
called by the Greeks and Romans, known among the Jews,
however, from the earliest times, by the far older name of Mount
Hermon. On the determination of this point, more words have been
expended than some may deem the matter to deserve; but among
the various objects of the modern historian of Bible times, none is
more important or interesting, ♠than that of settling the often disputed
topography of the sacred narrative; and as the ground here taken
differs so widely from the almost universally received opinion, the
minute reasons were loudly called for, in justification of the author’s
boldness. The ancient blunders here detected, and shown to be
based only upon a guess, is a very fair specimen of the way in
which, in the moral as in the natural sciences, “they all copy from
one another,” without taking pains to look into the truth of small
matters. And it seems to show, moreover, how, when men of patient
and zealous accuracy, have taken the greatest pains to expose and
correct so causeless an error, common readers and writers too, will
carelessly and lazily slip back into the old blunder, thus making the
counsels of the learned of no effect, and loving darkness rather than
light, error rather than exactness, because they are too shiftless to
find a good reason for what is laid down before them as truth. But so
it is. It is, and always has been, and always will be, so much easier
for men to swallow whole, or reject whole, the propositions made to
them, that the vast majority had much rather believe on other
people’s testimony, than go through the harassing and tiresome task,
of looking up the proofs for themselves. In this very instance, this
important topographical blunder was fully exposed and corrected a
century and a half ago, by Lightfoot, the greatest Hebrew scholar
that ever lived; and we see how much wiser the world is for his
pains.

♦ “inconsistences” replaced with “inconsistencies”

♠ duplicate word “than” removed

Caesarea Philippi.――This city stood where all the common maps place it, in the
farthest northern part of Palestine, just at the foot of the mountains, and near the fountain
head of the Jordan. The name by which it is called in the gospels, is another instance, like
Julias Bethsaida, of a compliment paid by the servile kings, of the divisions of Palestine, to
their imperial masters, who had given, and who at any time could take away, crown and
kingdom from them. The most ancient name by which this place is known to have been
mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, is Lasha, in Genesis x. 19, afterwards variously
modified into Leshem, (Joshua xix. 47,) and Laish, (Judges xviii. 7: xiv. 29,) a name
somewhat like the former in sound, though totally different in meaning, (‫ לשם‬leshem, “a
precious stone,” and ‫ ליש‬laish, “a lion,”) undoubtedly all three being from the same root, but
variously modified in the changing pronunciations of different ages and tribes. In the earliest
passage, (Genesis x. 19,) it is clearly described as on the farthest northern limit of the land
of Canaan, and afterwards, being conquered long after most of the cities of that region, by
the tribe of Dan, and receiving the name of this tribe, as an addition to its former one, it
became proverbially known under the name of Dan, as the farthest northern point of the
land of Israel, as Beersheba was the southern one. It did not, however, lose its early
Canaanitish name till long after, for, in Isaiah x. 30, it is spoken of under the name of Laish,
as the most distant part of Israel, to which the cry of the distressed could reach. It is also
mentioned under its later name of Dan, in Genesis xiv. 14, and Deuteronomy xxxiv. 1, where
it is given by the writer, or some copyist, in anticipation of the subsequent account of its
acquiring this name after the conquest. Josephus also mentions it, under this name, in
Antiquities book i. chapter 10, and book viii. chapter 8, section 4, in both which places he
speaks of it as standing at one of the sources of the Jordan, from which circumstance, no
doubt, the latter part of the river’s name is derived. After the overthrow of the Israelitish
power in that region, it fell into the hands of new possessors, and under the Greeks and
Romans, went by the name of Panias, (Josephus and Ptolemy,) or Paneas, (Josephus and
Pliny,) which name, according to Ptolemy, it had under the Phoenicians. This name,
supposed to have been taken from the Phoenician name of the mountain near, Josephus
gives to it, in all the later periods of his history, until he speaks of the occasion on which it
received a new change of name.

Its commanding and remarkable position, on the extremity of Palestine, made it a

frontier post of some importance; and it was therefore a desirable addition to the dominions
of Herod the Great, who received it from his royal patron, Augustus Caesar, along with its
adjacent region between Galilee and Trachonitis, after the death of Zenodorus, its former
possessor. (Josephus Antiquities book xv. chapter 10, section 3.) Herod the Great, out of
gratitude for this princely addition to his dominions, at a time when attempts were made to
deprive him of his imperial master’s favor, raised near this city, a noble monument to
Augustus. (Josephus as above quoted.) “He built a monument to him, of white marble, in
the land of Zenodorus, near Panium. There is a beautiful cave in the mountain, and beneath
it there is a chasm in the earth, rugged, and of immense depth, full of still water, and over it
hangs a vast mountain; and under the cave rise the springs of the Jordan. This place,
already very famous, he adorned with the temple which he consecrated to Caesar.” A lofty
temple of white marble, on such a high spot, contrasted with the dark rocks of the mountain
and cave around, must have been a splendid object in the distance, and a place of frequent
resort.

This city, along with the adjacent provinces, after the death of the first Herod, was given
to his son Philip, made tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis. This prince, out of gratitude to the
royal donor, at the same time when he rebuilt and repaired Bethsaida, as already
mentioned, “also embellished Paneas, at the fountains of the Jordan, and gave it the name
of Caesarea.” (Josephus Antiquities book xviii. chapter 2, section 1, also Jewish War, book
ii. chapter 9, section 1,) and to distinguish it from other Caesareas, hereafter to be
mentioned, it was called from the name of its royal builder, Caesarea Philippi, that is, “the
Caesarea of Philip.” By this name it was most commonly known in the time of Christ; but it
did not answer the end of perpetuating the name of its builder and his patron, for it shortly
afterwards recovered its former name, Paneas, which, probably, never went wholly out of
use. As late as the time of Pliny, (about A. D. 70,) Paneas was a part of the name of
Caesarea. Fons Paneas, qui cognomen dedit Caesareae, “the fountain Paneas, which gave
to Caesarea a surname.” (Pliny Natural History book v. chapter 15,) which shows, that at
that time, the name Paneas was one, by which even foreign geographers recognized this
city, in spite of the imperial dignity of its new title. Eusebius, (about A. D. 315,) speaks of
“Caesarea Philippi, which the Phoenicians call Paneas, at the foot of mount Panium.”
(Φιλιππου Καισαρεια ἡν Πανεαδα Θοινικες προσαγορευσι, &c. Church History book vii. chapter
17.) Jerome, (about A. D. 392,) never mentions the name Caesarea Philippi, as belonging
to this city, except in commenting on Matthew xvi. 13, where he finds it necessary to explain
this name, as an antiquated term, then out of use. Caesaream Philippi, quae nunc dicitur
Paneas, “Caesarea Philippi, which is now called Paneas;” and in all the other places where
he has occasion to mention the place, he gives it only the name of Paneas. Thus, in
commenting on Amos viii. 14, he says, “Dan, on the boundary of the Jewish territory, where
now is Paneas.” And on Jeremiah iv. 15,――“The tribe Dan, near mount Lebanon, and the
city which is now called Paneas,” &c.――See also commentary on Daniel xiii. 16.

After the death of Philip, this city, along with the rest of his dominions, was presented by
Cains Caligula to Agrippa, who added still farther to the improvements made by Philip, more
particularly ornamenting the Panium, or famous source of the Jordan, near the city, as
Josephus testifies. (Jewish War, book iii. chapter 9, section 7.) “The natural beauty of the
Panium, moreover, was still more highly adorned (προσεξησκηται) with royal magnificence,
being embellished by the wealth of Agrippa.” This king also attempted to perpetuate the
name of one of his imperial patrons, in connection with the city, calling it Neronias, in honor
of one who is well enough known without this aid. (Josephus Antiquities book xx. chapter 8,
section 3.) The perfectly transient character of this idle appellation, is abundantly shown
from the preceding copious quotations.

The city, now called Banias, (not Belinas, as Wahl erroneously says,) has been visited
and examined in modern times by several travelers, of whom, none has described it more
minutely than Burckhardt. His account of the mountains around the city, so finely illustrates
my description of the scene of the transfiguration, that I extract largely from it here. In order
to appreciate the description fully, it must be understood that Heish is now the general
Arabic name for the mountain chain, which was by ancient authors variously called
Lebanon, Libanus, Anti-Libanus, Hermon, and Panium; for all these names have been given
to the mountain-range, on whose slope Caesarea Philippi, or Paneas, stood.

“The district of Banias is classic ground; it is the ancient Caesarea Philippi; the lake
Houle, is the Lacus Samachonitis. Immediately after my arrival, I took a man of the village to
shew me the way to the ruined castle of Banias, which bears East by South from it. It stands
on the top of a mountain, which forms part of the mountain of Heish, at an hour and a
quarter from Banias; it is now in complete ruins, but was once a very strong fortress. Its
whole circumference is twenty-five minutes. It is surrounded by a wall ten feet thick, flanked
with numerous round towers, built with equal blocks of stone, each about two feet square.
The keep, or citadel, seems to have been on the highest summit, on the eastern side,
where the walls are stronger than on the lower, or western side. The view from thence over
the Houle and a part of its lake, the Djebel Safad, and the barren Heish, is magnificent. On