Word: oiling
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...European companies are especially drawn to Libya because its so close to Europe; Italy, for example, avoids giant shipping costs involved in importing oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, by bringing in natural gas through a pipe under the Mediterranean. Libya is keen for investment to help fund much needed work in roads, rail links, telecommunications, and even on its oil rigs. Libya's Soviet-era military equipment is also in bad need of an overhaul, and France, Britain and Russia are all vying for multi-billion-dollar defense contracts. "Libya can offer a lot of investment opportunities," Zainy...
...Italian companies signed deals for huge oil and gas investments in Libya in 1998, soon after the Italian government issued an official apology for its human-rights violations in Libya before World War II, when Libya was an Italian colony. Last year - the 10th anniversary of that apology - the two countries signed a friendship treaty involving $5 billion worth of infrastructure deals. And in 2007, while trying to negotiate a major deal to sell Libya French fighter jets, French president Nicolas Sarkozy secured the release of a group of Bulgarian nurses from a Libyan prison, where they were jailed...
...Some oil analysts and Libya watchers on Friday said they suspected that British officials had tacitly made it known to Libyan officials that they would not object to Scotland releasing Megrahi - even if they stopped short of reassuring Libya that he would be freed. Scotland's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill insists he made the decision alone, after meeting with Clinton and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and holding a video conference with U.S. relatives. But the BBC reported last week that British business minister Peter Mandelson had held a brief conversation earlier this month with Seif Gaddafi, when...
...Libya sits atop massive energy reserves, much of which have languished through decades of sanctions. The British oil company BP last year estimated Libya's proven reserves at about 41.5 billion barrels of high-grade oil, and about 1.49 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, which makes it the 10th biggest oil and gas reserves in the world. (Watch a TIME video on oil...
...Relations with London have also warmed. In 2007, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with Gaddafi in the Libyan leader's tent in Tripoli. Soon after, BP officials signed a $900-million exploration deal with Libya's state-run National Oil Company; BP believes the deal could ultimately earn it about $15 billion in oil revenues. But Blair has denied that there was ever a link between the deal and the release, telling CNN on Saturday that he didn't have the power to arrange Megrahi's release. "I wasn't in a position...