Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said it had sent the case of the shutdown of Al-Feel oilfield and Bier Terfas gas pipeline to the Attorney General’s Office in Tripoli, The Libya Observer reported.

Furthermore, the company announced that it will take legal action against the group of people who have used force to close the valve of the gas pipeline feeding the Zawia power station. The pipeline belongs to the Sirte Oil and Gas Company and is located in the Bir Terfas area near Bani Walid, south of the capital Tripoli, according to Libya Herald.

A group of the southern Petroleum Facilities Guard from the Tubu tribe in Libya’s south has shut down Al-Feel oilfield and prevented the workers from resuming oil production to prolong the closure of the field after it had been shut over the last two years.

The group demanded full payment of delayed salaries by the government.

The NOC said that this forced and illegal closure by these groups had resulted in the Zawia power plant losing a large part of its generation capacity as a result of having to run using diesel which has to be transported in at an enormous cost to the public treasury. The NOC stated that a ‘‘humanitarian disaster’’ on a national level was caused as a result of the total blackout and failure of the national power grid to most areas of the country on 14 January which led to deaths and suffering for Libyans in general and to the south in particular.