ROME — European countries sent planes and ferries to Libya on Monday to evacuate their citizens, and some international oil and gas companies pulled their foreign staff out and suspended operations, as anti-government protests spread to Tripoli for the first time.
Many countries had already urged their citizens to avoid nonessential travel to Libya or recommended that those already there leave on commercial flights. But as the bloody protests moved to Libya's capital countries and companies alike stepped up their contingency plans.
Oil companies, including Italy's Eni, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, U.K.-based BP and Germany's Wintershall, a subsidiary of BASF, were evacuating their expat workers or their families or both. BP and Wintershall said they were temporarily suspending operations; Eni said production continued normally.
Libya is one of the world's biggest oil producers and has the largest proven oil reserves in the whole of Africa. Eni, Italy's largest natural gas and oil company, is the biggest oil company operating in Libya, where it has at least six contracts alongside the Libyan state oil company.
Portugal sent a C-130 plane to pick up its citizens and other EU nationals, and Turkey sent two ferries to fetch construction workers stranded by the unrest.
The EU said the bloc was preparing for the possible evacuation of European citizens. It does not have the power to require its member states to evacuate their citizens from a foreign country, but ministers can agree on coordinated action in some cases.
"We are very worried about the situation in Libya," Spain's foreign minister, Trinidad Jimenez, said at a regular monthly EU ministerial meeting in Brussels that was largely focused on the unrest across the Middle East. "At the same time, we are coordinating the possible evacuation of EU citizens from Libya."
EU countries planned a teleconference Monday afternoon to discuss flights out of Libya, Finnish Foreign Ministry spokesman Teemu Turunen said.