Shokri Ghanem also said Libyan oil installations at Ras Lanouf, Brega, Es Sider and Mellitah were “completely” under central control and oil workers were assessing the condition of facilities.
“People are coming back and returning to their work,” Ghanem said from Libya.
“It does not mean that production will come back in one day or two days. It will take some time; there is a lot of damage and there was a lot of looting.”
The uprising against the rule of Muammar Qaddafi has sharply reduced oil production in Libya, usually Africa’s third largest producer with output of 1.6 million barrels per day, or almost 2 percent of world supply.
Ghanem said last week Libya’s oil production had fallen to about 500,000 bpd and did not provide a new figure on Tuesday when giving his latest update on the state of the OPEC member’s oil industry.
Earlier, the head of the Libyan oil workers’ union said all Libya’s oil export terminals except Tobruk in the east were back under central control.
An oil firm based in rebel areas, Agoco, said it was now only pumping oil to Tobruk in the far east of Libya after Qaddafi’s forces retook Ras Lanouf.
Ghanem also said NOC had put out an oil tank fire at Ras Lanouf terminal, damaged as a result of fighting there. He had been worried that the fire could spread to other storage tanks at the facility.
The NOC chief said he had asked the head of Italian oil firm Eni SpA, Libya’s largest foreign oil operator, for help in dealing with the fire, but ENI did not respond.
