The chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority Mohammed Layas said Wednesday that Libya may look for a new partner for Tamoil and that his organization had no deal with an American buyer.

The Libyan government has canceled Colony Capital LLC's plans to buy a majority stake in its European refining company, Tamoil, and is unlikely to offer the U.S. private equity group any compensation for ending the deal, the head of the Libya's sovereign wealth fund said Wednesday.

"No agreement was reached. We couldn't make a deal happen," Layas told Dow Jones Newswires.

Layas declined to say why Libya reversed course on the deal but said the North African oil-producing country had no plans to offer Colony any financial compensation. "I don't see that happening."

The Libyan government reached a deal in June to sell a 65% stake in Tamoil to Colony Capital. The Los Angeles-based private equity group would have paid around $3.5 billion for its stake in Tamoil.

The government recently transferred full control of Tamoil to the fund.

Layas said Libya may seek a new Tamoil partner in the months ahead.
"This could be a consideration in the future," he said, declining to elaborate.

The state-run Libyan Investment Authority, or LIA, created last autumn, has around $40 billion in capital, which the government is looking to invest in international assets.

Tamoil owns refineries in Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, where it is based, and operates more than 3,000 filing stations in Europe.
The original deal was supposed to have been finalized at the end of 2007.