Libyan oil firm Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco) has pledged half of its crude production to Rotterdam-headquartered Vitol until it has repaid the energy trading company for fuel supplied to anti-Gaddafi forces during the uprising.

Vitol supplied the rebels with more than $1bn of fuel during the six-month civil war that ended with Gaddafi’s expulsion from Tripoli, according to Agoco chairman Ahmed Majbri.

Around half of this amount has been repaid in a mix of cash, crude oil and naptha.

“We will give them 50 per cent of production until we have paid them back,” says Majbri.

Agoco announced it had restarted production at the Sarir oil fields on 14 September, pumping 160,000 barrels a day (b/d), also resuming operations at the refinery and sending crude to the export terminal in Tobruk.

Production at a 50,000 b/d field in Sarir had restarted a day earlier.

Before the oil industry came to a standstill in February, Agoco pumped around 420,000 b/d, roughly a quarter of Libya’s pre-war output.