Kadhafi Still Boosted by Millions of Oil Dollars

collapsing regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is still millions of dollars in increased revenues from exports, despite Western sanctions, Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Business newspaper, citing a senior Western official oil traders said that the payments for exports of oil were to find its way back to the Central Bank of Libya, and possibly in the management of Qaddafi's.

In the last week of February, when the violence, Libya exported about 570,000 barrels a day, and shipped about 400,000 barrels last week, according to the FT.

Libyan oil is delivered over the past two weeks, costs about $ 770 million (550 million euros) at current price levels, the paper added.

Libya is the fourth largest oil producer in Africa and was about 2.3 percent of world oil production before the crisis.

FT added that Libya's exports are now gradually slowing down, but that the Chinese and Indian companies continue to buy oil.

Before the weekend in New York, crude oil prices spiked to two-year high point above $ 104 a barrel Friday as traders looked heavy fighting in Libya, particularly in the east of the country, which accounts for about two-thirds of the country's products.

In another blow, Paris, International Energy Agency estimated Friday that Libyan production has fallen by one million barrels per day (mbpd) in connection with the crisis.

OPEC Libya normally exports about 1.6 million barrels per day, 85 percent of which goes to Europe, according to IEA, which represents industrialized oil-consuming countries.

"After the evacuation of the western oil production crew, Libyan levels of output is difficult to determine, although our recent data show about 1.0 million barrels a day from the prevailing 1.6 million barrels per day of production were shut down," the IEA said in a brief statement, published on Friday.

"The Libyan ports, which are loaded 1.337 million barrels per day of oil in 2010, working on favorable terms because of bad weather in late February and the current unrest. Believed that the 500,000-600,000 barrels of crude lifted from the Libyan port in recent weeks."