Inside the $20 billion black market keeping Libya from civil war

Libya’s fuel-smuggling economy has moved well beyond leakage and petty diversion.

It is now a structured parallel system tied into the state’s own operating channels, with both eastern and western power centers benefiting. As we have repeatedly said, this is the fake stability that keeps the country from erupting into civil war again.

The revenue loss (north of $20B from 2022-2024) tracks with the period when refinery runs, allocation schedules, and tanker dispatches were repeatedly adjusted in ways that created excess product on paper and predictable diversion points in practice. The change in NOC leadership earlier this year did not change this: The networks were already embedded across refinery management, depot control, coastal security units, and the shipping intermediaries that move product through Malta and Tunisia.

The eastern apparatus around General Khalifa Haftar has expanded its role, particularly through the desert corridors feeding southern markets and the coastal routes near Tobruk and Hariga. Western groups around Zawiya and Zuwara continue to dominate short-haul refined-product runs into the central Mediterranean. The same vessels, brokers, and front companies that have circulated through previous investigations remain active, suggesting the system is stable, insulated, and comfortable operating under Libya’s fragmented oversight.

Inside Libya, we’re looking at major fuel shortages, growing subsidy pressure, and a widening gap in dollar.