Oil tanker may be first since uprising to leave Libya

REUTERS - An oil tanker arrived at the rebel-held east Libyan port of Marsa el Hariga on Tuesday as the market expected the vessel to load the first cargo in weeks since an uprising against Muammar Gaddafi halted exports.

AIS live ship tracking data on Reuters showed the Liberian-registered tanker Equator, which can carry up to 1 million barrels of oil, had arrived at the terminal.

"It appears to be in ballast with no cargo," a shipping source said, referring to the depth of a vessel in the water which gives an indication of whether it is loaded.

The rebel-led government said it had concluded a deal with Qatar to market crude oil and had discussed plans with a U.N. envoy to exempt its oil exports from sanctions that have been imposed on Gaddafi entities.

Before the unrest, Libya was producing around 1.6 million barrels per day of oil and exporting some 1.3 million bpd. Since its exports halted, Brent crude futures have risen to around $120 a barrel from around $100 before.

“We are assuming that most, if not all, of the Libyan volumes will be offline for the balance of the year but that the region will see no new physical supply outages," CIBC World Markets said in a report last week.