UN blacklists India-flagged ship carrying oil from Libya

An Indian-flagged oil tanker has been added to a United Nations sanctions blacklist for illegally carrying crude from Libya.

The Distya Ameya vessel was headed for Malta after leaving on Monday from eastern Libya, where rival authorities were behind the sale of the crude.

The decision would mean that port authorities in Malta or in any other destination country would have to impound the tanker on arrival.

The UN sanctions committee said the vessel may have been sold recently and its name changed to Kassos.

On Tuesday, the tanker was north of al-Bayda, Libya and headed in the direction of Malta.

A Security Council diplomat said the tanker's final destination could be the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and that the cargo was in violation of a ban on oil revenues to entities other than Libya's new unity government.

The tanker was listed for "transporting crude oil illicitly exported from Libya, based on information received from the government of Libya," the sanctions committee said in a news release.

On Wednesday, the most senior United Nations official in Libya said he was deeply concerned by recent Islamic State [IS] incursions into Libya's oil crescent region and by attacks carried on oil fields.

"The attacks of the so-called Islamic State and its intention to control vital strategic areas are a serious threat to Libya's oil installations," warned Martin Kobler, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), in a press release.

The attacks of the so called Islamic State and its intention to control vital strategic areas are a serious threat to Libya's oil installations - Martin Kobler

"It constitutes a grave assault not only on the lifeline of Libya's national economy, but on the very livelihoods of millions of ordinary Libyans, many of whom are already enduring hardship as a consequence of the ongoing political and military conflict in Libya," he added.

Libya was left with two rival administrations after a militia alliance took over Tripoli in mid-2014, but a new UN-backed government of national unity is seeking to assert its authority in the country.

The new government is working to tighten control over the country's oil revenues with the National Oil Corporation and the central bank both throwing their support behind the new authorities earlier this month.

The country has been in chaos since Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was ousted and killed in 2011.