Libya is set to invest US$42 billion in the next five years to develop and expand its upstream sector, according to Dr Shokir Ghanem, CEO of the Libyan National Oil Company (LNOC).

Speaking to ArabianOilandGas.com in an exclusive interview that will be published in full in both Petrochemicals Middle East and Oil and Gas Middle East, Dr Ghanem underlined Libya’s commitment to its hydrocarbons industry.

“The budget of LNOC is about this $7 billion this year dedicated to development, oil companies are also going to invest between $1-2 billion. In the next five years we plan to invest a total of $42 billion in development and exploration,” Dr Ghanem said.

Currently, Libyan oil production is about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd).

“We produce 1.5 million bpd because of the OPEC production cuts, but our capacity is actually 2 million bpd. We are working to improve our capacity to reach 2.3 bpd by 2012 and 3 million bpd by 2015” said Dr Ghanem.

“We also produce 14 billion cubic feet per year of gas that is mainly exported to Europe through a subsea pipeline linking Libya to Italy” he added.

Dr Ghanem was also in the news yesterday after predicting that the next decade would see huge mergers between National Oil Companies and the supermajors.