The Financial Times is reporting that US oil companies are expected to begin negotiations with Libya over the nation’s oil reserves early in the new year. Washington is expected to lift the trade sanctions that have been in place since 1986. Libya has about 40,000 million [forty thousand million] barrels of oil reserves, about one eighth of the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Companies expected to seek contracts include Conoco-Philips, Marathon Oil. Occidental Petroleum, Exxon Mobil and Hess.

Meanwhile the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed ElBaradei is in Libya examining the nation’s nuclear sites. He said the country’s nuclear program was at a very early stage contradicting reports out of Washington and London.