The US is backing a dynastic deal in Libya. It wants the oil, not the democracy

Trump adviser Massad Boulos has spent months brokering a power-sharing arrangement built around two family networks: the Dbeibehs in the west and the Haftars in the east, with the reported plan installing Ibrahim Dbeibeh as prime minister and 35-year-old Saddam Haftar as president. The April 2026 unified national budget of 190 billion Libyan dinars, approximately $30 billion, is the financial foundation of the arrangement, and the mechanism is straightforward: enough fiscal consolidation to stabilise oil flows, enough political cover to open new blocks to US energy investment. Libya's National Oil Corporation hit approximately 1.43 million barrels per day in early April, a ten-year high, and the Trump administration has publicly endorsed a production target of 3 million bpd. That ambition, if even partially realised, adds to the supply overhang building as Hormuz reopens. UK energy companies with Mediterranean exposure and investors in North African infrastructure should treat this not as a peace process but as an energy asset activation. The political durability of any Dbeibeh-Haftar arrangement is a separate, considerably less optimistic question.