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Tobruk - Libya's oil output has risen further, pushing world oil prices lower, defying the chaos of more fighting between the factions that divide the country and a government driven from the capital.
Crude output has reached 925 000 barrels per day (bpd), a spokesperson for the National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Thursday, the highest since before militias turned on each after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.
Oil production had fallen as low as 200 000 bpd at times over the last year due to protests and port blockades, but has been recovering since the summer.
There are still fears Libya could descend into all out civil war, with two parliaments and governments competing for legitimacy.
An armed group seized the capital Tripoli in August, forcing the elected parliament to move to Tobruk, a remote city which has mostly escaped the chaos.
On Thursday a spokesman for Libyan state-backed oil firm Sirte Oil said protesters demanding jobs had blocked the entrance to the company's administrative building at the eastern port of Brega, though its oilfields continued to operate.
Rising output from Libya has contributed to a fall in the international benchmark oil price to a two-year low this week, despite fears of supply disruptions in Iraq and Syria.
Libya's eastern Hariga oil port has also fully recovered from eight months of blockades by protesters, port officials said, and is exporting more than 120 000 bpd.
Hariga, located in Tobruk near the border with Egypt, reopened in April with three other eastern ports, under deal with a group of rebels which had ended a protest to demand regional autonomy.
"We are back to normal. The port is operating normally," Hariga terminal manager Rajab Abdulrasoul told Reuters.
"We just exported one million (barrels) to China."
Hariga was slow to restart as the connecting Sarir and Messla fields needed to increase production and a group of security guards started a brief new protest to make financial demands.
Abdulrasoul said the southern Sarir field was pumping around 80,000 bpd. Sarir was running below its capacity of more than 200 000 bpd because the connected eastern Ras Lanuf refinery had not restarted work yet since the end of the rebel blockage, he said.
Some 20 000 bpd was used to feed the Tobruk refinery which supplies the local market and also exports some products mainly to southern Europe.
"The rest is being exported," Abdulrasoul said.
In August, 3.845 million barrels of crude, or around 124 000 bpd a day on average, was lifted from Hariga. In September, 2.72 million barrels, or some 129 000 bpd, left the port until the 21th, the latest port data showed.
Tankers came from Italy, Croatia, Britain, Singapore, Liberia and Malta, according to details provided by the port administration.
Tobruk's refinery, also located at the oil port, exported 77 546 barrels of diesel and 123 026 barrels of untreated naphtha until September 21th, the data showed.
