Libya and Russia plan to actively build ties in the oil and gas sectors following talks held in Tripoli this week. Even as the West courts Libya, the former state sponsor of terror is looking elsewhere for investment.

Libyan representative Shukri Ghanem, chief of the board of directors of Libya’s National Oil Company, met with the co-chairman of the Russia-Libya Business Council, Ara Abramyan, on Wednesday to discuss the prospects of cooperation between the two countries, according to Itar-Tass News Agency.

Ghanem and Abramyan agreed to establish a joint working group to examine areas of cooperation and draft agreements in the oil and gas sectors. The group will study the state of basic oil infrastructure and prospects for drilling operations.

The two sides also discussed increasing Russia’s investment in Libya’s energy industry.

Libya is the second-largest oil producer in Africa and has the continent’s largest oil reserves. Investment and development has been limited since the 1980s, when Libya was sanctioned for sponsoring terrorist activities including the Lockerbie bombing. However, those sanctions were lifted in 2003 and 2004, opening the way for Libya to receive much-needed assistance to develop its oil sector.

U.S. companies rushed in, and initially won most of the oil contracts on offer. Since then, however, other countries, including Russia, have been making inroads. In Libya’s third oil exploration round in 2005, for example, Russia won the bulk of oil exploration licenses. In April this year, Libya’s National Oil Company signed an exploration, production and sharing agreement with Russia’s Tatneft.

Russia is also investing in Libya’s gas industry, with state-controlled Gazprom signing an agreement with Libya’s National Oil Company this March to explore and develop a 10,288 square-kilometer offshore block. The two companies also discussed possible future joint ventures for oil and gas production in Libya.

It now appears Libya and Russia intend to extend their energy cooperation further with the agreement to set up a new joint working group.

Despite the West’s wooing of Libya, it appears that Tripoli is quite happy to seek the assistance of Russia, a nation whose foreign policy is largely based on countering the United States. As Libya seeks to strengthen ties with anti-American nations, we may see its flirtation with the West become a thing of the past. Biblical prophecy indicates Libya will align with Iran in the future, so we can expect an increasingly anti-American foreign policy to emerge in that country.

At the same time, Russia, the world’s second-largest oil exporter and largest natural gas exporter, would only be strengthened further by having closer energy ties with Libya.

As energy resources become increasingly scarce and the competition for them more intense, watch for further cooperation between nations hostile to the United States.