Libya Preface

The Libyan Oil Reporting Guide has been designed to provide a prototype reference guide for those wanting to know more about the Libyan Oil Industry, an industry which has, in the past, been shrouded in secrecy. Following the Libyan revolution, this provides the first step in increasing public knowledge about an industry which will be crucial to rebuilding the Libyan economy.

All of the information included here is publicly domain and publicly available, and is clearly referenced (please see the list of footnotes at the back of the guide) which enables the reader to easily find the source of the information for further research. Crucially, it was created using the MediaWiki software platform, which means that there is now an online database of all of the articles included here which can be updated as more information becomes available. View rights are universal on the Oil Reporting Guide but editing is currently restricted to those with administrative rights.

This also means that this printed guide is just a snapshot of what the database is at the moment; we hope that it will grow in the future as the online articles are updated. While the information already collected is in itself a useful tool, it would ideally be just the beginning of a locally-based knowledge community around the oil industry.

Our objective is to work with Libyan journalists and civil society to Arabise the site and grow it, so that an editorial team take it over and it becomes the basis of a knowledge community. To create this, the next stage of the project is to take the articles collected here and translate them into Arabic, to provide a basis for developing the wiki autonomously. Over a 12-month period, 3 week-long workshops would take place, in Libya, for around 15-20 journalists. During this time, they would be shown how to edit and manage the online database, as well as introduced to issues in and around the oil industry that may require more explanation. At the end of this time, administrative rights for the Arabic wiki will be handed over to local partners, and they would take responsibility for adding information to it as more becomes available, as well as introducing more journalists to the topic via locally run workshops.

This would create an ever increasing group of energy specialist Libyan journalists who would feel comfortable and be capable of covering the oil industry, which is essential especially in Libya, both for increasing public knowledge and for holding the state-owned oil industry accountable for their actions.

This printed guide is merely a prototype, and could easily be expanded to cover more topics in greater detail. If you are interested in working with OpenOil to further develop this prototype, please email zara.rahman@openoil.net or telephone +49 30 246 303 622.

Enjoy!

The OpenOil Team http://openoil.net – Imagine an open oil industry

http://openoil.net/wiki/mediawiki-1.17.0/index.php?title=Main_Page – Wiki Front Page