Libya
The Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, better known as Libya, is located in central North Africa. It is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by Egypt, on the west by Algeria and Tunisia, and on the south by Chad, Niger, and Sudan. With a surface area totaling 1.76 million square kilometers (680,000 square miles), it is the fourth largest country in Africa and the fifteenth largest in the world.
An arid state, there is not a single permanent river or stream in the entire country, and only 2 percent of Libya receives enough rainfall for settled agriculture. Although the desert predominates in Libya, the country offers surprising geographical diversity. Less than 20 percent is covered by sand dunes, notably the Awbari and Marzuq Sand Seas in the southwest and Kalanshiyu and Rabyanah Sand Seas in the southeast, with much of the remainder covered by rocky or gravel plains.
With the exception of a few oases, the most productive agricultural areas are located on the coastal strip and the highland steppes behind it. The discovery of petroleum deposits in commercial quantities in 1959 dramatically altered the Libyan economy. Libya began exporting high-quality crude oil in 1961, and by 2004 some 90 percent of the country's revenues came from hydrocarbons.
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