Anglo–Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Baar, Switzerland, Glencore has secured a deal to buy roughly the half of the oil Libya is currently exporting, Finantial Times reported.

The deal provides Libya with a consistent buyer for its crude exports at a time when many traders and oil companies are wary of lifting cargoes from its ports because of concerns over security.

The agreement, which started in September and carries an option to renew in December, covers 150,000 barrels a day.

Under the arrangement with Libya’s state-run National Oil Corporation (NOC), Glencore loads and finds buyers for all the Sarir and Messla crude oil exported from the Marsa el-Hariga port near the country’s eastern border with Egypt, OilAndGasInvestor reported.

The NOC, along with the central bank, is one of the few institutions still functioning in Libya, where a civil war has left the country divided between an internationally recognised government in the east and an Islamist militia in the west that controls the capital Tripoli.

The National Oil Corporation and Glencore declined to comment, FT said.