This summer, a striking and surreal offer laid bare the depth of Libya’s ongoing energy catastrophe. Al Robyan, one of Tripoli’s most beloved coastal seafood restaurants, took to Facebook earlier this month to advertise a deal no local business would ever normally propose: a full spread of fresh seafood for anyone willing to trade the restaurant “some fuel for the generator”.
In a raw, frustrated caption, the restaurant wrote, “We’ve run out of earthly solutions.” The post went viral, racking up thousands of comments, many from locals joking that a generator fuel tank would cost far more than the entire seafood spread the restaurant was offering.
Al Robyan’s desperate gambit is just one small example of how widespread the crisis has become. Across Libya this summer, residents have faced near-daily power outages stretching between six and 10 hours each day. The situation is all the more baffling and infuriating for Libyans, given that their nation is one of the most hydrocarbon-rich countries on the continent: it pumps more than 1.3 million barrels of oil per day, and counts a total population of just over 7.5 million people.
“Since these massive shortages started, every business in Libya has been affected,” explained Alaeddin Muntasser, a retired Tripoli-based businessman, who calls the current situation an “electricity disaster.” Speaking to Middle East Eye, Muntasser described the cascading impacts of extended blackouts, noting that one local water-bottling facility was knocked offline for weeks, leading to widespread drinking water shortages across parts of the capital. Without power to operate pumps and filtration systems, the plant could not produce bottled product, leaving communities without a reliable supply.
Muntasser added that the crisis has already pushed countless small local eateries to close permanently. Only a small number of operations that can afford to purchase and fuel a private generator have managed to stay open. For ordinary households, the impact has been equally devastating: many families enduring the longest blackouts have lost all the perishable food stored in their refrigerators and freezers, adding unnecessary financial strain to already stretched household budgets.
The crippling power shortages have already sparked mass public protests across multiple Libyan cities, including Tripoli, Zawiya, and Misrata. Demonstrators are not only demanding urgent action to restore a consistent power supply; they have also called for the resignation of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, whose internationally recognized government controls western Libya.
To understand why a nation with Africa’s largest proven oil reserves faces such constant power shortages requires looking at decades of structural collapse and political division. Libya generates roughly 70% of its electricity from domestic natural gas, with the remaining share coming from oil. This makes the national power grid extremely vulnerable to declining production and operational disruptions at gas fields and along pipeline networks, problems that have mounted for years.
“The electricity crisis and related protests is one of those problems that will not go away until Libya’s government can implement a longer-term strategy that ensures a more reliable electricity supply, whether that be through refined fuels or renewable energy sources,” explained Hamish Kinnear, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft, in an interview with Middle East Eye. Kinnear noted that while energy crises are not uncommon across the region, “for citizens of a country with the largest oil reserves and the fifth largest gas reserves in Africa, as well as significant solar power potential, blackouts are a particular source of frustration.”
The roots of today’s crisis stretch back more than a decade, to the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi and threw the country into years of chaotic division. In the years since the uprising, Libya has split into two rival governing blocs: the internationally recognized administration led by Dbeibah in the west, and a separate eastern government backed by military forces under General Khalifa Haftar and aligned with foreign powers.
Years of systemic underinvestment in both gas production and power grid infrastructure, combined with this year’s record-breaking heatwave that pushed temperatures above 50°C, have combined to create the perfect storm that collapsed the system this summer.
“Oil wealth only becomes reliable electricity when institutions can convert it, and Libya’s institutions have been fractured for over a decade,” said Karim Elgendy, executive director of the Carbon Institute, a think tank focused on energy and climate issues across the Middle East and North Africa. “Rival authorities issue competing decisions over the same grid and the utility recovers almost none of its costs. Years of deferred maintenance have left the network running on ageing equipment with no margin for error. So every summer becomes a stress test the grid is not ready for,” Elgendy told Middle East Eye.
In a bid to ease the immediate shortfall this summer, Libya turned to its neighbor Egypt for emergency assistance. Earlier this year, the two nations signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen energy sector cooperation, with senior officials from both sides meeting in July to discuss expanding energy ties. Following July’s widespread blackouts, Egypt increased its electricity exports to Libya by around 43%, bringing total shipments to 100 megawatts. Even with this sharp increase, however, the additional supply meets only a small fraction of Libya’s total needs, covering less than 10% of the country’s current generation shortfall. Libya also settled $90 million in outstanding unpaid energy dues to Egypt as part of the agreement.
On paper, energy cooperation between the two nations makes intuitive sense: Libya holds massive untapped hydrocarbon reserves, while Egypt has existing refining capacity, power generation infrastructure, and engineering contractors that could help Libya develop its resources. “The complementarity between the two economies is real: Libya has the hydrocarbons, Egypt has the refining, the generation fleet and the contractors,” Elgendy noted. But he added that “genuine integration begins when both sides commit to a long-term commercial framework with obligations running both ways,” a commitment that has yet to materialize.
There is also a hidden risk to Libya relying on Egyptian electricity imports: Egypt itself is facing growing energy security challenges, as its domestic natural gas production has declined amid depleting mature reserves. “Egypt’s own power system leans heavily on imported gas it does not control, and recent supply interruptions showed how quickly that exposure travels down the chain. A country importing electricity from Egypt is, indirectly, importing Egypt’s gas risk,” Elgendy explained. Egypt has already turned to foreign suppliers to meet its growing gas demand, signing a landmark $35 billion deal with Israel in 2025 that will nearly triple Egyptian imports from the Israeli Leviathan offshore gas field.
Many analysts remain deeply skeptical that the recent energy cooperation agreements between Libya and Egypt will deliver meaningful long-term relief for Libyans. Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, argues that the recent diplomatic outreach is “not to be taken seriously” as a solution to Libya’s electricity crisis. Harchaoui believes that energy needs are not the primary driver of the recent diplomatic engagement, framing it instead as a superficial diplomatic gesture. “I think it would be very incorrect to say that the electricity situation is the reason for the meeting,” he told Middle East Eye. “There has been a pattern whereby Tripoli tends to say to Egypt: ‘Let’s talk. And by the way, I notice you’re suffering from energy shortages. Libya has a small population and a lot of energy, Tripoli is happy to help you, Egypt.’” He called the gesture “more of a diplomatic trick than something really genuine, especially during a summer when Libya itself is grappling with a very serious electricity crisis.”
Harchaoui argues that the core problem has been ignored by Libyan policymakers for more than a decade. Libya holds massive onshore and offshore natural gas reserves, “but the error that Libya made, and it’s a profound error with long-time consequences, is that it hasn’t kept up in terms of natural gas production capacity.” While natural gas generates roughly three-quarters of the country’s electricity, “years have gone by with no new natural gas project of any significance even being launched.”
As a result, existing gas infrastructure is seeing declining output, and even if a major new project were approved today, Harchaoui said it would take at least seven to eight years to come online. If current trends continue, he warned, Libya could be forced to import natural gas within just a few years — a deeply humiliating reversal for a major hydrocarbon producer that would eliminate any narrative of complementary energy ties between Libya and Egypt.
Harchaoui attributes the failure to both cultural priorities and systemic corruption. For decades, Libya’s economy has centered almost entirely on crude oil production, leading policymakers to treat natural gas development as an afterthought, even though it powers the vast majority of the country’s electricity. Systemic corruption has also slowed progress dramatically, not only diverting public funds away from infrastructure projects but also dragging out decision-making as officials negotiate bribes. “To do a corrupt project, you need more time than to do an honest project, because you have to make sure all the key officials are satisfied with their bribes,” Harchaoui said, alleging that some power plant units purchased between 2022 and 2025 were actually secondhand equipment that was misrepresented as new to siphon off public funds.
Political division has also shaped where public anger over the crisis has boiled over. Harchaoui noted that Dbeibah has repeatedly unfulfilled promises to “resolve” the electricity crisis since taking office in 2021, leading to concentrated unrest in western Libya, where public protest is far easier to organize than in eastern Libya under Haftar’s tighter authoritarian grip. Blackouts have hit eastern and southern Libya just as hard, Harchaoui stressed, but public discontent there has not translated into the same level of visible political unrest.
