VZCZCXRO2265
RR RUEHTRO
DE RUEHTRO #0979/01 3251129
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 211129Z NOV 07
FM AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 2847
INFO RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC
RUEHRB/AMEMBASSY RABAT 0513
RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS 0562
RUEHTU/AMEMBASSY TUNIS 0354
RUEHEG/AMEMBASSY CAIRO 0917
RUEHVT/AMEMBASSY VALLETTA 0225
RUEHRO/AMEMBASSY ROME 0338
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 0666
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0362
RUEHTRO/AMEMBASSY TRIPOLI 3274

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 TRIPOLI 000979 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR NEA/MAG, COMMERCE FOR NATE MASON, PARIS FOR ESPOSITO, 
LONDON FOR TSOU 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON EINV EPET ENRG LY
SUBJECT: LIBYAN MARKET TESTS INTERNATIONAL OIL AND GAS COMPANIES 
 
REF: A) TRIPOLI 511  B) TRIPOLI 912 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary:   Although an alluring market for the oil and 
gas industry, Libya is an exceptionally difficult place in which 
to operate.  In their daily operations, international oil 
companies (IOC's) face numerous challenges on visas, staffing 
and taxation issues, and their profit margins are comparatively 
narrow.  The situation is likely to worsen in coming years, as 
Libyan authorities seek to extract additional concessions from 
energy companies operating in the country to maximize Libya's 
profits, even at the expense of continuing to attract further 
participation by reputable IOCs in the critical oil and gas 
sector that is the nation's lifeblood.  End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) The results of Libya's latest Exploration and 
Production Sharing (EPSA) bid round, which is focused on natural 
gas, are due to be released December 9, and the country appears 
to be moving ahead with plans to develop its oil and gas 
industry.  The National Oil Corporation (NOC) has implemented 
three successful EPSA bid rounds since January 2005, and has 
also concluded lucrative one-off deals with major international 
oil companies (IOCs) to develop new territories (ref A).  The 
third (i.e., most recent) EPSA round, has attracted almost 60 
companies from more than 25 countries as operators and 
investors.  With more than forty IOCs already operating in Libya 
and oil prices at record highs, it would seem that the sector is 
the place to be in Libya; however, IOCs describe it as an 
extremely challenging environment that consistently tests their 
patience and financial limits.  What follows is a summary of 
some of the most pressing difficulties they face; Post will 
outline challenges faced by oil service companies septel. 
 
NOC TAKES A HARD LINE 
 
¶3.  (SBU) In addition to renegotiating existing agreements to 
extract additional concessions (ref B), the NOC is taking a hard 
line in a number of other areas.  The general sense in the GOL 
appears to be that the NOC holds all the cards.  NOC Chairman 
Shukri Ghanem put it a bit more diplomatically at the recent 
World Energy Congress in Rome, where he said the NOC is in a 
position to dictate policies that reflect "changing conditions" 
in energy markets.  The fierce competition among IOCs to enter 
the Libyan market and book reserves has fed the NOC's perception 
that it is a seller's market.  It has also led to the reality 
that Libya features some of the smallest profit margins in the 
world for IOCs.  One senior IOC official, whose company produces 
oil in partnership with a state-run firm, recently said his firm 
makes the same profit in a neighboring country in which its 
production is only one-quarter that of its production in Libya. 
That dramatic difference underscores the comparatively high 
operating costs for oil/gas producers in Libya and raises grave 
doubts about the profitability of deals agreed in the last two 
EPSA bid rounds, which featured razor-thin production sharing 
factors, reportedly as low as 6.8 percent of future production 
in at least one case. 
 
¶4.  (SBU) The NOC appears to be actively looking for ways to 
extract additional concessions, or to cut services previously 
provided to the IOCs.  Part of this may be the result of the 
fact that the NOC is unable to effectively stave off other 
players in the bureaucracy, particularly the powerful General 
People's Committee (GPC) for Manpower, Training and Employment. 
Led by long-time cabinet minister and regime insider Matug 
Matug, the ministry has been one of the most active in 
pressuring IOC's to hire greater numbers of Libyans, many of 
whom are unqualified,   The NOC is striking hard bargains with 
thin profit margins at the same time that it is asking IOCs to 
absorb ever-increasing costs -- direct and indirect -- for work 
done in Libya.  The end result is a substantially more difficult 
and less profitable operating environment that has given IOCs 
pause to consider how seriously they want to pursue further 
concessions. 
 
HERE, HAVE A MANAGER ... BETTER YET, HAVE TWO 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The increasingly restrictive labor regulations for 
IOCs and service companies, mandated by the GPC for Manpower, 
Training and Employment are particularly onerous.  The GPC for 
Manpower recently directed that for every new expatriate hired 
by an IOC, one Libyan must be added to the company payroll as 
 
TRIPOLI 00000979  002 OF 003 
 
 
well.  It is required that certain key positions in IOCs' local 
offices - deputy country manager, finance manager and human 
resources manager - be staffed by Libyans.  Companies have tried 
various ways to comply with these requirements, from hiring 
competent managers away from NOC-run companies to hiring and 
immediately marginalizing an "empty suit" employee.  Other 
tactics include adding a lightly disguised expatriate layer atop 
the position encumbered by a Libyan and stalling with respect to 
encumbering positions designated for Libyan nationals. 
Expatriate IOC representatives consistently bemoan the time and 
training required to bring new Libyan hires up to speed; a lack 
of candidates with professional fluency in English and other 
basic skills is a persistent problem.  IOC managers stress that 
they invest considerable time and resources training 
locally-engaged staff everywhere in the world; however, they 
describe Libyan employees as being less able upon hiring than 
most, necessitating longer, more costly training. 
 
VISA WOES CONTINUE TO RANKLE 
 
¶6.  (SBU) At the heart of the IOCs' struggle to succeed in 
Libya's difficult operating environment is the constant 
difficulty of obtaining visas and work permits.  The NOC has 
increasingly used visas and residency permits as a tool by which 
to enforce compliance with the "hire Libyan" policy, refusing to 
issue visas or residency permits to expatriates encumbering 
deputy manager, finance manager or HR manager slots.  Expatriate 
employees often have to leave the country as their residency 
permit runs out and remain outside the country for weeks or 
months while their company works to get the permit renewed. 
Many companies are forced to use two-week business visas, which 
may be renewed twice, for up to six total weeks in country.  The 
Byzantine visa requirements put a tremendous administrative 
burden on IOCs, which typically maintain up to a half-dozen 
locally-engaged employees to work on nothing but visas and 
residency permits.  The GPC for Manpower's edict that a new 
Libyan employee be hired for each new expatriate hired has an 
additional, visa-related wrinkle: for each renewal of a one-year 
visa for an expatriate employee, an additional Libyan employee 
must be hired.  An expatriate employee staying on for three 
years could be accountable for the addition of four Libyan 
employees (one counterpart at hiring plus one for each visa 
issued).  The NOC reportedly opposes this requirement, but has 
been trumped by the GPC for Manpower. 
 
THE TAX MAN COMETH 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Various arms of the Libyan government are also working 
to extract additional tax revenue from energy sector activities. 
 This is reflected in the imposition of a two percent "Stamp 
Tax," which will be assessed on all contracts falling under the 
December EPSA round and all new contracts signed after that. 
This tax has been sporadically applied to other areas of the 
economy, specifically where foreign investment is involved, 
since it first appeared on the books in 1955.  An effort by the 
Libyan Tax Authority to collect it on contracts under previous 
EPSA rounds was successfully contested by the affected 
companies, leading to the Tax Authority's announcement that all 
future contracts would be subject to it.  There is also a move 
afoot to extract additional tax revenue from offshore 
exploration and drilling.  The GOL had previously allowed the 
servicing of these activities out of Malta, but is now moving to 
curtail that and to require that they be based out of Libya. 
The relocation of onshore support services for offshore 
operations generates considerable income for the Tax Authority; 
offshore drilling operations can cost up to $750,000 per day for 
deep-water operations.  In addition, the NOC recently decided it 
would no longer act as an intermediary between the IOCs and the 
Tax Authority.  IOCs have been forced to hire additional staff 
and devote considerable resources to parsing through Libya's 
amorphous tax system to determine what their obligations are and 
how to meet them. 
 
RISING SALARIES GUTTING STATE-RUN COMPANIES 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Libya's state-owned companies continue to protest what 
they consider to be unreasonably high rates for expatriate 
labor, and have attempted to hold a line at the rate schedule 
employed in 2002 during the sanctions period.  Overall salaries 
 
TRIPOLI 00000979  003 OF 003 
 
 
have risen about ten percent for each of the past two years, but 
the state-owned operator oil companies (e.g., Waha, Zeuitina) 
still lag well behind the IOCs in terms of compensation.  They 
are accordingly hemorrhaging seasoned workers, who are taking 
advantage of high international demand for oil/gas worker to 
leave Libya for more lucrative opportunities in the Gulf and 
elsewhere.  As the state-run firms fail to offer competitive 
wages for expatriate workers, they are unable to fill current 
vacancies.  An example is the state-run firm Waha, which has at 
least 100 expatriate vacancies at present, constituting roughly 
one third of its expatriate workforce.  The situation affects 
not only these companies and the NOC, but also the IOCs that 
depend on state-run firms  as operating partners.   This is the 
arrangement for almost all companies engaged in production and 
export activities.  The GOL's decision (under Law No. 43 of 
2006) to pull back the NOC's procurement offices in London and 
Dusseldorf (Umm Jawaby and Medoil, respectively) also creates 
problems for state-run firms, which have had their supply lines 
interrupted by the disruption of a long-established logistics 
system and the ongoing movement of more than two hundred state 
employees from Europe back to Libya. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Comment: Libya's oil and gas sector is in many respects 
the bellwether for the rest of its emerging economy.  The fact 
that IOCs, which successfully operate in some of the most 
forbidding environments in the world, are having such a 
difficult time underscores how far the GOL has to go in terms of 
reform if it is to achieve its stated goal of attracting greater 
foreign investment and commercial interest to Libya.  We 
consistently hear expressions of disappointment from senior GOL 
officials that more U.S. firms have not rushed to enter Libya's 
market since sanctions were lifted and Libya was removed from 
the state sponsors of terrorism list.  Pernicious requirements 
such as the "one expat-one Libyan" hiring policy and capricious 
visa policies, however, do nothing to encourage other U.S. and 
foreign companies with less international experience than the 
IOCs to enter the Libyan market.  End comment. 
STEVENS