Libya joined OPEC in 1962. Since the Revolution, Libya has played a prominent role in negotiations with the multinational oil companies, succeeding in significantly increasing the producers' revenues from oil production. Libya also has lobbied, without notable success, for the investment of petroleum profits in Third World nations rather than in industrialized countries.

Libya has pursued the same general policies within the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), of which it is a founding member. In 1972 Libya recommended an amendment to the OAPEC membership eligibility requirements, changing the stipulation that oil be "the major and basic source" to merely "an important source" of a country's national income. As a result of the adoption of that amendment, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt joined OAPEC later in the year. Libya has been an advocate of the use of oil as a political weapon it enthusiastically backed OAPEC's oil embargo of the United States and the Netherlands, as well as the production reduction affecting most other West European countries after the October 1973 War. Libya unsuccessfully resisted OAPEC's decision to remove the embargo in March 1974.

Data as of 1987