The new US push for peace in Libya is — surprise — about the oil

The new US push for peace in Libya is — surprise — about the oil Massad Boulos — Trump’s Africa and Middle East envoy who is also the father-in-law to Trump’s daughter, Tiffany — has focused much of his diplomatic work in recent months on Libya (newarab.com), criss-crossing the country to meet with members of Libya’s two rival governments in an attempt to secure a power-sharing arrangement between the two.Publicly (libyaobserver.ly), Trump’s team has billed this diplomatic effort as a worthy attempt to bring sustained peace and democracy to the country through the formation of a unified government that can put an end to 15 years of armed group violence and political factionalism.But the Trump administration’s true interest in Libya appears to be not so much peace for the sake of regional stability, but rather to secure a quid-pro-quo arrangement in which American firms receive preferential access to the country’s vast oil wealth.Claudia Gazzini, a senior analyst for Libya at the International Crisis Group, told Responsible Statecraft that “oil has always been a key interest in driving U.S. policy in Libya” under both the Trump and Biden administrations.But Trump’s interest in Libya goes beyond oil, Gazzini said: “there is also a more immediate aspiration [for Trump] to secure a deal and to be seen as victorious — having brought peace to yet another conflict.” Trump indeed touts a long list (bbc.com › c5y3599gx4qo) of wars he claims to have ended, even though a number of them have restarted following an initial peace deal. Among these are the Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Egypt-Ethiopia, Serbia-Kosovo, and Israel-Hamas conflicts. Libya’s oil wealth is in fact quite extraordinary. The country has the largest (chathamhouse.org) proven oil reserves on the continent, a fact that has spurred many American energy companies to seek access — including Chevron (noc.ly), ConocoPhillips (reuters.com), and Halliburton (libyaherald.com), all of which have increased oil-based investments in Libya over the past year. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil (reuters.com) lifted its decade-long suspension of operations there last August, when it signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the state-owned Libyan National Oil Corporation to conduct studies to identify offshore hydrocarbon resources. Providing American firms with preferential access to the market could reduce their costs of operating in Libya, thus making them more competitive in a volatile oil market.Indeed, accessing new oil has become an important point of emphasis for the Trump administration as the dangers of global over-reliance on oil transport chokepoints have been made apparent during the war he started with Iran. As a result of this conflict, oil traffic (nytimes.com › strait hormuz iran war oil) through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz has decreased to a mere trickle. Now transport through the Red Sea routes is in question, too. Although the United States produces much of its own crude, oil prices (tradingeconomics.com › crude oil) are responsive to global market conditions, so the current war in the Gulf has had a significant effect (brookings.edu) on oil prices across the worl