Inside the $20 Billion Black Market Keeping Libya From Civil War

OilPrice · Editorial Dept · last updated November 21, 2025 – 3:20 AM

Libya’s fuel-smuggling economy has moved well beyond leakage and petty diversion. It is now a structured parallel system tied into the state’s own operating channels, with both eastern and western power centers benefiting. As we have repeatedly said, this is the fake stability that keeps the country from erupting into civil war again. The revenue loss (north of $20B from 2022-2024) tracks with the period when refinery runs, allocation schedules, and tanker dispatches were repeatedly adjusted in ways that created excess product…

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