Libya Zawya Drone Attack Adds Fresh Supply Risk as Hormuz Disruption Persists
Drone strikes on Libya's Zawya oil hub, where a tank held 4.5 million liters of gasoline, raise force majeure risk as Strait of Hormuz shipping confidence stays shaky.
Libya's National Oil Corporation is weighing a force majeure declaration on exports from the Zawya oil terminal after drone attacks on the facility, according to a report published Tuesday (2026-08-11). The company operating the terminal said one tank held 4.5 million liters of gasoline at the time of the strikes.7
Zawya handles 120,000 barrels per day, sourced from Sharara, Libya's largest oil field, which has a production ceiling of 300,000 barrels per day, Reuters noted. A force majeure declaration would suspend contractual delivery obligations on those volumes, adding another disruption layer to a Middle East supply picture already shaped by months of Hormuz constraint.7
Hormuz traffic remains severely disrupted, with shipping data and market reports through early August pointing to persistent caution among shipowners. The US government told Bloomberg Radio that approximately 6.5 million barrels of oil per day had exited the Gulf via the strait over the preceding week, with the navy escorting some tankers through. The Al Areesh openly exited the Persian Gulf on Thursday (2026-07-30) carrying crude, in a move read by observers as a test of passage, Rigzone reported.6
That escort activity reflects how fragile the normalisation of Hormuz transit has been. An attack in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday (2026-06-25) hit a vessel that had just cleared the chokepoint, resetting shipowner confidence just as traffic had begun recovering, Oilprice.com reported. The cycle of vessels moving, then new attacks dampening flows, repeated across the spring and summer of 2026.4
Disruption in flows began accumulating from late February, when the US-Israeli war on Iran started. Three supertankers carrying a combined 6 million barrels of Middle East crude spent more than two months anchored in the Gulf before crossing the strait on Wednesday (2026-05-20), bound for Asian markets, LSEG and Kpler data showed. The South Korean-flagged VLCC Universal Winner held 2 million barrels of Kuwaiti crude loaded on March 4 (2026-03-04), while Chinese-flagged VLCC Yuan Gui Yang carried 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude loaded on February 27 (2026-02-27), a day before hostilities began.1
Three other tankers carrying a combined 6 million barrels exited on Monday (2026-05-18) with their AIS transponders switched off, according to Kpler and LSEG data, a precaution against Iranian attack.2
Asian buyers felt the supply squeeze most directly. An LNG tanker carrying fuel for India made the first such shipment for that route to clear the strait during the conflict, in the period around Sunday (2026-05-24).3 JKM Asian LNG was quoted at $21.18 per MMBtu at 08:52 UTC on Wednesday (2026-08-12). ICE Brent crude front-month traded at $89.63 per barrel at the same timestamp.
Gulf producers largely continued loading through the disruption. About 8 million barrels of Emirati and Qatari crude moved out on four VLCCs over the weekend of June 28 (2026-06-28), Kpler data showed, even as US-Iran strikes resumed. Brent fell 10.6% in the week of June 22 (2026-06-22), its third weekly decline at that point, before fresh weekend strikes lifted prices on Monday (2026-06-29), according to shipping industry reports.5
The Libya development adds supply risk through the same refined product channels that regional buyers depend on. NOC has projected it could raise Libyan crude production from the current 1.4 million barrels per day to 2 million barrels per day by the early 2030s, a target backed by a $2 billion allocation from the latest Libyan national budget. Whether the Zawya attack delays that trajectory depends on damage assessments not yet made public, and on whether a force majeure declaration comes or the terminal is restored quickly enough to limit the interruption.7