On 20 October, Libya’s House of Representatives unanimously endorsed the maritime memorandum of understanding (MoU) on boundary delimitation that the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord signed with Turkey in 2019.
Two weeks earlier, HoR speaker Agila Saleh, close to Athens and Cairo, was replaced by al-Saleheen Abdul Nabi al-Abidi, former chair of the parliamentary friendship committee with Turkey. The vote marks rare agreement between Libya’s rival sides after years of impasse, as investor interest in the country’s upstream oil and gas sector rebounds.
But while the deal briefly unites Libya’s rival camps with a single stroke of the pen, it deepens the country’s divisions with its neighbours. Greece, Egypt and Cyprus have expressly rejected the MoU, while Malta, Tunisia and Italy have formally protested the more expansive claim Libya filed at the UN in May 2025.
Libya’s claims have already prompted a new flurry of notes verbales. Boundary tensions that have shaped the pace and focus of exploration in the eastern Mediterranean are now moving rapidly west. Maritime claims cost little at home and can sit on paper for years. But this one now carries the backing of both Libyan rival camps, making it much harder for any future government to concede.
A new scramble for the Mediterranean
The energy shocks of the 2020s, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the Israel–U.S. war against Iran, have revived interest in frontier hydrocarbons, while a slower energy transition extends their relevance.
This is not an upstream spending surge, as headline capital expenditure shows little new money. Instead, exploration is shifting to new frontiers, often through lower-cost survey and reconnaissance permits, increasing pressure to define boundaries. On these frontiers, even modest exploration can revive dormant disputes, and the mere prospect of hydrocarbons sharpens them.
Libya’s maps leave open how far it intends to push its claims, as two 2025 initiatives push into waters its neighbours claim or have opened to exploration. In June 2025, the National Oil Corporation (NOC) signed a study agreement with Turkey’s state-owned TPAO covering four offshore areas. The easternmost, Area 4, covers most of the waters claimed by both Libya and Egypt, next to Egypt’s Herodotus basin, which is showing potential. Any work there would put Tripoli and Ankara in direct competition with Cairo.
