ERHC Energy Inc (ERHE)

[nordicroots]

Good news or bad news for Total? You decide. According to information that was published at Defense One today, it appears that Turkey is about to send troops to Libya. One has to wonder if any of the MRO blocks were given away to Turkey in this instance (I wonder [but you may not] as they note towards the end of the story that Ankara signed a deal with the Tripoli government that would give Turkey drilling, pipeline and other maritime rights over an expanded portion of the Mediterranean Sea between the countries).

In any case, the point in raising the observation is that if things heat up there in terms of civil unrest and/or military action, I would not be surprised if Total puts this on the back burner for a while. And if that were to be the case, then perhaps they might just have more immediate interest in focusing their attention a bit more urgently in such a way that they accelerate the time tables on the other offshore prospects of interest to this group!

https://www.defenseone.com/news/2019/12/the-d-brief-december-11-2019/161819/

"Turkey says it might send troops to Libya "to stop the Russian-backed forces now closing in on Tripoli," the New York Times reported Tuesday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the remarks twice in the past two days,
Why Turkey? "[B]ecause of its rivalry with the Emirati-Egyptian-Saudi bloc in a regional cold war, [Ankara] has become the only significant military backer of the Tripoli government," the Times writes.
Why now? "Over the last three months, Russia has transformed Libya's simmering civil conflict by deploying large numbers of fighters in what increasingly appears to be a determined push to help [Libyan militia leader Khalifa Hifter] capture the capital." Hifter's latest assault, "launched April 4, left his forces stalled for more than five months on the southern outskirts of the city." But with Russian support, that assault has a new momentum. As a result, "Over the weekend, they captured most of the neighborhood of Salah el-Deen, one of their biggest gains in months."
Worth noting: "Erdogan has more at stake, though, than stability in Libya," the Times reports. And his remarks about intervening with troops in Libya "come just days after Ankara signed a deal with the Tripoli government that would give Turkey drilling, pipeline and other maritime rights over an expanded portion of the Mediterranean Sea between the countries. That set off outrage from Greece and Europe, but gave Turkey a new financial stake in the Tripoli government." Read on, here."