Libya Reopens Oil Concessions, Remembering the 'Humanitarian Intervention'
Libya is set to announce which foreign firms will win its first oil and gas exploration licenses since the early 2000s, according to The New Arab. This new era of resource exploitation begins just over a decade after the 2011 NATO 'humanitarian intervention'—an operation ostensibly to protect civilians that somehow resulted in regime change, a collapsed state, and, wouldn't you know it, access to
crude. It's almost as if the 'responsibility to protect' creed was merely a thinly veiled prospectus for future drilling rights. One might wonder about the timing. Nations don't typically hand out lucrative contracts when they're stable. They do it when they're desperate, divided, and under the sway of various external actors who so 'generously' helped them achieve their current state. The media,
of course, frames this as a positive step for Libya's 'ailing economy,' rather than the predictable outcome of external meddling aimed squarely at resource control. Good to see the oil flowing freely now that the 'dictator' is gone and the civilians are... well, they're still there, just with less government and more foreign companies.