TRIPOLI, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- Protesters from cities along Libya's western coast on Tuesday shut down the Mellitah oil and gas complex in protest against persistent power outages, according to local media.
The move came amid growing public discontent in western Libya over deteriorating services and recurring power cuts, which have recently sparked road closures and the shutdown of public facilities.
The Mellitah complex, located about 100 km west of Tripoli, is one of the major energy facilities in western Libya, housing processing, storage, and export facilities. It also serves as the launch point for the Greenstream pipeline, which delivers Libyan gas directly to Italy.
Similar protesters forced the complex's closure in late July, prompting the National Oil Corporation and the General Electricity Company to warn of the potential repercussions of shutting down gas facilities on the energy sector and power grid.
Large parts of western Libya have experienced weeks of rolling blackouts. In August, a widespread outage knocked several power generation plants offline and caused grid collapses in parts of southern, western and central Libya. ■
