A Tripoli seafood restaurant's desperate Facebook plea — a table of fresh catch in exchange for generator fuel — captured what fifteen years of fractured governance has done to one of Africa's most resource-rich nations. Al Robyan's post drew thousands of responses this month, many noting the fuel would cost more than the seafood. It wasn't a joke. It was survival economics in a country where daily blackouts now last six to ten hours, where water bottling plants can't pump, where small restaurants have shuttered, and where families have lost everything in their freezers.
Libya sits on Africa's largest oil reserves and its fifth-largest gas reserves. It has significant solar power potential. And it can't keep the lights on.
The Human Toll
Alaeddin Muntasser, a retired businessman in Tripoli, described the situation as an "electricity disaster." He told Middle East Eye that since the massive shortages started, "every business in Libya has been affected." One water-bottling plant he knew of couldn't pump or filter, leaving parts of the country short of drinking water for weeks. Many small restaurants shut down entirely. Only those who could afford generators kept their ovens running. People in the worst-hit areas lost all the food in their freezers and fridges.
Over the summer, protests erupted in Tripoli, Zawiya, Misrata and elsewhere. Temperatures hit 50C this year. The power grid couldn't cope. Libya generates roughly 70 percent of its electricity from natural gas, leaving it highly exposed to falling gas production and disruptions at fields and pipelines. Oil accounts for almost all the remainder. Years of deferred maintenance have left the network running on aging equipment with no margin for error.
Fifteen Years of Institutional Collapse
The roots of the crisis go back to 2011, when a Nato-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. The country hasn't recovered. It split into rival administrations: one in the west headed by the internationally recognized government of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, another in the east backed by forces led by General Khalifa Haftar and foreign governments. Years of underinvestment in the power grid and gas production, combined with this year's heatwave, have all come to a head.
Karim Elgendy, executive director of the Carboun Institute, put it plainly: "Oil wealth only becomes reliable electricity when institutions can convert it, and Libya's institutions have been fractured for over a decade." Rival authorities issue competing decisions over the same grid. The utility recovers almost none of its costs. "So every summer becomes a stress test the grid is not ready for," he said.
Hamish Kinnear, principal Middle East and North Africa analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said the electricity crisis "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." For citizens of a country with such vast energy reserves, he noted, blackouts are "a particular source of frustration."
The Egypt Gambit
In January this year, Egypt and Libya signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen cooperation in the oil and gas sector. In July, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and other Egyptian officials met with senior Libyan officials, including National Oil Corporation chairman Massoud Suleman, to discuss deepening energy ties. Following Libya's electricity blackouts throughout July, Tripoli turned in part to Egypt, which boosted electricity export capacity to Libya by approximately 43 percent, reaching 100 megawatts.
Despite the apparently sharp rise, the extra supply met only a fraction of Libya's electricity needs — covering less than a tenth of its recent generation shortfall. Libya also settled outstanding dues to Egypt totaling around $90m.
Elgendy said the complementarity between the two economies is real: "Libya has the hydrocarbons, Egypt has the refining, the generation fleet and the contractors." But he added, "Genuine integration begins when both sides commit to a long-term commercial framework with obligations running both ways." He also warned that 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."
In recent years, Egypt has had to turn to Israel. Cairo signed a record $35bn gas deal with Israel one year ago, almost tripling its gas imports from the Israeli Leviathan gas fields and marking the largest export deal in Israel's history.
A Cultural Failure, Not Just Technical
Jalel Harchaoui, Libya specialist with the Royal United Services Institute, dismissed the Libya-Egypt energy cooperation as "not to be taken seriously." He described it as "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 said Libya sits on abundant natural gas reserves both onshore and offshore, "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." Gas still accounts for roughly three-quarters of the country's electricity output, yet years have gone by "with no new natural gas project of any significance even being launched." Existing assets have been "shrinking in terms of output," and even a new project greenlit today would take "at least seven or eight years" before producing results. On current trends, he warned, Libya could within a few years be "humiliated to the point of having to import natural gas" — a reversal that would undercut any framing of Libya and Egypt as complementary energy partners.
Part of the failure, Harchaoui said, is cultural as much as technical. Libya operates with "the culture of a crude oil-producing country" that "just doesn't think in terms of natural gas" as a priority, even though gas, not oil, is what actually keeps the lights on. Corruption has compounded the delay, not only by diverting money but by slowing decision-making itself. "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," he said, alleging that some power plant units installed between 2022 and 2025 were purchased secondhand and passed off as new.
He also pointed to years of unfulfilled promises by the country's prime minister, who has claimed since five years ago to have "resolved" the crisis, as one reason unrest has concentrated in the west, where protest is easier to organize than under Haftar's tighter grip in the east. Blackouts are hitting the east and south too, just less visibly and without the same political cost.
Why This Matters:
Libya's electricity crisis is a case study in how institutional collapse translates into daily suffering for ordinary people. The country's vast energy wealth means nothing when rival governments can't agree on grid management, when corruption slows every decision, and when no one prioritizes the infrastructure that actually delivers power to homes and businesses. The human cost is immediate: spoiled food, closed businesses, water shortages, and a summer of protest born from frustration that oil and gas riches can't produce a single reliable day of electricity. Without long-term investment in gas production or renewable energy, and without the political stability to execute it, Libya's blackouts will remain a permanent feature of life — a daily reminder that resource wealth without functioning institutions is just potential, not power.