The Grand Omar Mukhtar reservoir project south of Benghazi. Photo by Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
For people in Cyrenaica (Barqa) in eastern Libya, recent power cuts have become inseparable from access to water. On July 18, a region-wide blackout cut power to the Sarir and Tazerbo wellfields and a pumping station in Benghazi. Power began returning gradually from around 8:00 a.m. local time, with electricity restored to Sarir first and to Tazerbo by midday. The Great Man-Made River Authority then began gradually restoring well operations and water flows as electricity returned.
This was not an isolated breakdown. On May 30, another widespread outage stopped all operating wells in Sarir, Tazerbo and Hasawna before technicians began a gradual restart, according to a second Libyan News Agency report. The same incident affected Ajdabiya’s water reservoir and a pumping station in Suluq.
By July 3, the problem had become so repetitive that the Man-Made River Authority publicly blamed recurring power interruptions for disrupting water production. Alwasat reported that a single electrical disturbance had knocked 41 Sarir wells and 11 Tazerbo wells offline, while the authority said repeated outages were affecting daily urban and agricultural water needs.
Then, on July 23, another outage linked to the shutdown of a generating unit at the Sarir gas power station forced 143 wells out of service — 92 in Sarir and 51 in Tazerbo. Water supply to some cities and areas was reduced for 24 hours to protect the system and preserve levels in the Ajdabiya reservoir. The General Water and Sewerage Company subsequently offered water tankers for residents, hospitals and care facilities, as Libya Alahrar reported.
Why a service failure becomes a political question
Libya’s power crisis is national, but in Cyrenaica (Barqa) service failures carry added political meaning because of a longer history of centralisation and regional inequality.
Modern Libya was formed in 1951 from Cyrenaica (Barqa), Tripolitania and Fezzan as a federal kingdom; federalism ended in 1963. Cyrenaica is the historic eastern region, centred on Benghazi; Tripolitania is the western region centred on Tripoli, and Fezzan is the historic southern region, centred on Sabha.
Benghazi, the principal city and historic political centre of Cyrenaica (Barqa), was central to the 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. Al Bayda and Tobruk have held important administrative roles; Al Marj and Ajdabiya are major eastern centres. Federalist and later separatist currents show how services, resources and regional identity became politically intertwined. This regional marginalisation has a documented political history. A 2012 Carnegie Endowment analysis recorded eastern complaints about parliamentary representation, overseas scholarships and diplomatic appointments after 2011.
Oil-rich geography, fragile services
The contradiction becomes sharper when Libya’s resource map is considered. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says Libya holds Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and that about 95 percent of recoverable reserves are concentrated in the Sirte and Murzuq basins.
Much of Libya’s resource base lies in the east and south, while key financial and administrative institutions remain concentrated in the capital, Tripoli.
This does not mean that oil or electricity produced in one region belongs only to that region, nor that western Libya is spared from infrastructure failure. Libya’s grid is nationally interconnected. In October 2021, the General Electricity Company announced the reconnection of the eastern and western wings specifically so the network could use generation from plants across the country.
Historical records also show cross-regional flows. In January 2016, the electricity company said severed lines between Ajdabiya, the Wahat area and the western network removed 350 MW from the Sarir West and Zueitina plants, increasing load-shedding in Greater Tripoli, central and southern Libya.
In May 2025, the flow worked the other way: western lines were energised to help restart eastern generation. The evidence supports a two-way national grid, not a proven policy of deliberately taking a fixed “Barqa share” for Tripoli.
This raises a harder question: when blackouts persist near major energy and water infrastructure, how are electricity flows, investment and load-management decisions distributed between Libya’s regions?
A crisis of planning, not a shortage of resources
Libya has alternatives: gas, a long Mediterranean coastline, vast desert areas and strong solar potential. Yet on July 10, the Sarir–Sirte and Tazerbo–Benghazi water system reached its highest daily production since 2011 while power cuts remained an operating challenge.
World Bank data put Libya’s population at about 7.5 million across roughly 1.76 million square kilometres — approximately the combined area of France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Belgium. With abundant energy resources, persistent electricity and water failures point beyond scarcity to failures of planning, governance and accountability.
This helps explain uncomfortable nostalgia among some Libyans. People who regard Muammar Gaddafi’s 1969–2011 rule as authoritarian may still remember electricity and water as more predictable. That is not an endorsement of dictatorship; deteriorating services can make stability loom large in public memory.
