Libya’s major El Sharara oilfield has shut down production after an armed group seized it, oil ministry sources said yesterday.

A worker at the large south-ern field said there was a shooting, but more details were not immediately available.

The field was producing around 200,000 barrels per day before the shutdown, the sources said.

The area near the field, which is deep in Libya’s lawless south, has been the scene of fighting between rival tribes. Protesters have closed the field twice in the past 12 months to press authorities into accepting their financial and political demands.

The rapid return of Libyan crude oil to the market in recent months has added to a glut of crude that has driven down prices by more than 25 per cent since June, though growing political instability has increased uncertainty over the country’s levels of production and supply.

Western powers worry that Libya is heading toward civil war as authorities are too weak to control former rebels who helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but now defy state authority to grab power and a share of oil revenues.

Libya is divided between rival tribes and political factions, with two governments vying for legitimacy since an armed group from the western city of Misurata seized Tripoli in August, forcing the internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni to move east.

Meanwhile Libya’s elected Parliament, marooned in the remote eastern town of Tobruk since an armed faction’s seizure of the capital Tripoli, aims to relocate to its second city Benghazi soon once army units restore security there, its deputy speaker said late on Tuesday.

Al-Thinni was forced to move to another far-eastern town, Bayda, while the new powers-that-be in Tripoli have reinstated Libya’s country’s previous parliament and set up a rival government. Diplomats and analysts say Libya is at risk of unravelling as a viable state, although the Opec member continues to produce and export oil wealth despite the political disorder.

Deputy speaker Emhemed Shoaib said the House of Representatives now aims to move to Benghazi to regain some sense of normality, citing progress government forces have made progress towards ousting Islamist militants who had previously roamed the major port in eastern Libya unchallenged.