European oil and gas companies have evacuated staff and suspended drilling preparations in Libya as violence spreads across North Africa's major oil producer. Wintershall, the oil and gas exploration arm of BASF, said on Monday it was winding down Libyan oil production of as much as 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) and flying out international staff. Wintershall's move would amount to a sizeable drop in supply from Libya, most of whose oil exports flow to Europe and which pumps about 1.6 million bpd of crude oil, making it Africa's third-largest producer after Nigeria and Angola. Shockwaves from the unrest also hit Libya's former colonial overlord Italy -- a top foreign investor in Libya and a country in which the North African state has also invested billions. Shares in energy giant ENI, the biggest foreign oil producer in Libya, on Monday dropped by 4.57 per cent despite company assurances that operations had not been affected by the recent explosion of violence. ENI has been in Libya since 1959 and produced 244,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the country in 2009. "There have been no changes in production," an ENI spokesman said, shortly before the company announced it was pulling part of its staff and their families out of the country. Norway's Statoil, Austria's OMV and Royal Dutch Shell have also moved staff as scores of anti-government protesters were killed in the country's second-biggest city, Benghazi, and unrest spread to the capital Tripoli over the weekend. Production at the Murzaq oil field run by Spain's Repsol has been unaffected so far, as has output from Eni's operations. But UK oil major BP, which does not produce oil or gas in Libya but has been readying an onshore rig to start drilling for it in the west of the country, has suspended operations because of the escalating violence. "We are looking at evacuating some people from Libya, so those preparations are being suspended but we haven't started drilling and we are years away from any production," a BP spokesman said, adding BP has about 40 staff in the country. Royal Dutch Shell, whose operations in Libya are also limited to exploration, has temporarily relocated the dependents of expatriate staff outside the country, a spokesman for the Anglo-Dutch energy giant said, declining to comment further on operations. Austrian oil and gas group OMV said none of its operations in Libya have been affected but that it was withdrawing expatriate staff. Statoil, which participates in land-based oil production and exploration activities in the Mabruk field and in the Murzuk basin with Spain's Repsol, has closed its office in Tripoli and "a handful" of its foreign workers are leaving the country, a Statoil spokesman said. Oil production from the isolated Murzuq oil field in the desert in the south of the country continues as normal, a spokesman for operator Repsol said on Monday. Al Jazeera television reported on Monday that production from the Arabian Gulf Oil Company Nafoora oilfield had stopped because workers are striking, as violent unrest spread across the country which produces over one million barrels of oil a day.
