The head of the parallel government, Fathi Bashagha, has rejected the change of the percentage share of Eni participation between the National Oil Corporation and the Italian company “Eni” in the Mellitah Oil and Gas Company, warning of what he called “exploitation and entering into suspicious deals.”

In a statement issued Monday evening, Bashagha said that his government tracked what happened during the Energy Council meeting, and what was reported regarding changing the participation rates between the National Oil Corporation and Eni in the Mellitah complex, which leads to an increase in the share of the foreign partner at the expense of the national partner, as he put it.

Bashagha said that exploiting the Energy Council by engaging in suspicious deals without feasibility study and learning their benefits for the Libyan state will have dire consequences for everyone, considering that “this is another episode in a series of brokering the resources of the country and its people to a foreigner in exchange for staying in power,” he added.

In the same context, Bashagha warned the Italian company “Eni” against dealing opportunistically with the Libyans’ sources of income by exploiting political divisions, stressing that these bets do not fall under the category of developing strategic interests and long-term partnership, as he put it.

It is to be noted that the Mellitah Company manages a number of onshore oil fields scattered in various regions of Libya, and offshore fields represented in three offshore platforms, a floating reservoir, and a network of land pipelines of various sizes extending thousands of kilometers.