Libyan court stops energy deal with Turkey

A Libyan court suspended an energy exploration deal that the Tripoli government signed last year with Turkey, a judiciary source said, pausing an agreement that angered other Mediterranean powers and inflamed Libya's internal crisis.

The agreement had included scope for oil and gas exploitation in waters that Ankara and Tripoli have declared as their own, which are clearly in Egypt and Greece EEZ zones.

The deal had spurred rivalry in the eastern Mediterranean and played into a political standoff in Libya between the Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, in western Libya, and an eastern-based parliament that rejects its legitimacy.

Turkey sent military aid to Tripoli in 2019 to help the then internationally recognised government there ward off an assault on the capital by eastern forces in the civil war, which Egypt backed.

Later that year, Ankara and Tripoli struck a deal to establish a maritime boundary in eastern Mediterranean waters also disputed by Egypt and Turkey's historic rival Greece, prompting both those countries to reject the agreement.