By: OrePulse

Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said Sunday that it had opened a new natural gas field south of the city of Brega, putting the field's output in its initial phase at roughly 50 million cubic feet per day.

The announcement adds a new source of supply to Libya's gas network as the government pursues a broader plan to significantly expand national gas output over the next several years.

NOC board chairman Masoud Suleiman announced the start-up of the field, named Al-Rashad, on a date the corporation linked to a symbolic marker: 65 years since Brega port handled Libya's first crude oil export, in 1961. Brega has remained one of Libya's principal oil-export terminals in the decades since.

NOC did not disclose the size of Al-Rashad's reserves or say when the field was discovered. The corporation described the roughly 50-million-cubic-foot-a-day figure as preliminary and likely to change as the field moves into fuller operation.

NOC said the new supply would help meet demand from power stations and industrial consumers while bolstering the reliability of Libya's domestic energy supply. The corporation did not identify specific power stations or industrial facilities that would draw on the new gas.

The field's opening comes amid a wider government effort to grow national gas production. In September 2026, Oil and Gas Minister Khalifa Rajab Abdelsadek set out a goal of reaching 4 billion cubic feet of gas output per day within a three-to-five-year window, a volume the ministry equated with about 41 billion cubic meters annually.

The minister attributed most of the planned increase to output from fields already producing and to gas recovery — capturing free and associated gas that would otherwise go unused — rather than to new finds alone. He also pointed to increased investment in exploration and production work, and to cuts in the flaring of associated gas, as parts of the plan.

Libyan gas output stayed in a narrow band over the past several years. Figures cited from an energy research unit put national production at about 1.16 billion cubic feet a day in 2022, 1.13 billion in 2023, 1.19 billion in 2024, and 1.13 billion in 2025. Those levels remained well below the government's stated goal of 4 billion cubic feet a day, pointing to the scale of development and investment officials say will be required over the next three to five years.

Abdelsadek suggested the increase will hinge less on new finds and more on steady efficiency gains across existing production and processing operations, paired with fresh investment capital, to lift output from fields already online.

NOC is Libya's state-owned oil and gas company and oversees the bulk of the country's hydrocarbon production and exports.