Reply #100: Libyan employees 'saved oil, gas sector,' oil minister says [View All]

[tabatha]

BREGA, Libya — When Moammar Gadhafi's loyalists fled this sprawling refinery and petrochemical complex in late August, shortly after Tripoli fell, they left behind lethal "forget-me-nots" for the revolutionaries who unseated him.

There were 40,000 mines, both anti-personnel and anti-tank. A minefield still surrounds the town, and 6,000 mines were planted on what had been a popular beach. The grounds are littered with shells filled with explosives, plant officials said.

Russian-supplied Grad rockets were stacked by the thousands inside the methanol plant, still in their wooden cases, at a location that loyalists no doubt assumed NATO aircraft wouldn't bomb. Grads, which have a range of 25 miles, had been launched from Brega in banks of 40, with devastating impact on the forces trying to overthrow Gadhafi, officials of the national oil company said.

The refinery and liquid gas plant, a component of the Sirte Oil Co. — named for Gadhafi's hometown farther west on Libya's main coastal road — is now the only business in town because the departing forces destroyed both other sources of income.

"They erased all the small businesses. They killed all the livestock," Ali Tarhouni, the rebels' minister of finance and oil, said during a tour of the facility.

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