Rebel forces pushed into Tripoli and latest reports at the time of writing said government forces were engaged in a last-ditch battle and that Gaddafi’s forces were crumbling. However, the whereabouts of Gaddafi remain a mystery.

The North African country – a member of the OPEC oil cartel – is a significant producer of oil, exporting 1.5 million barrels per day . But in a note of caution, Dr Manouchehr Takin, senior petroleum upstream analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, said investors should not expect dramatic market effects.

When Libyan oil exports were hit at the start of the rebellion in mid-February, the impact on the world market and price of crude oil was limited, he said.

Some commentators had warned in the spring of this year that the disruption to oil supplies would, for example, cause massive queues for petrol in countries such as Italy – a long-standing importer of Libyan oil – and send the global price soaring. But that did not happen for various reasons, such as use of alternative supplies, Dr Takin told this publication.

“My comments at the time were that this was not going to cause big disruption,” he said.

The impact of any increase in Libyan oil output will be relatively mild – there is not going to be a sudden flood of oil on the global market, he said.

Dr Takin pointed out that in the wake of the Middle East and north African civil unrest, the International Energy Agency – with clear US support – announced it would release 60 million barrels from its strategic reserves.

At the time of this announcement on 24 June, crude oil prices fell by around 5 per cent.

Although oil is less significant as a driver of industrial production than was the case at the time of the 1973 oil shock, for example, this energy source is still a significant force on world economies.

Dr Takin’s own organization said in a recent note that OPEC’s “slow response” to a surge in oil demand last year and its slowness in replacing Libyan oil were key factors in driving Brent crude oil prices up around 51 per cent to its second-quarter average level of $118 per barrel.

"While it's likely to lead to an increase in supply in due course as production comes back on stream, the timing will be highly uncertain. The far greater issue for the oil price is whether global demand holds up in the event of a double dip recession, and it's this fear that has led to weakness in the price over the past few months,” Andrew Jones, a fund manager at Henderson, told this publication in an email.

At Barclays Capital, analysts said a difficult issue is estimating what the rebel forces will be like in power, as relatively little is known about them by outsiders. The investment bank also said it could take time to restore Libya's oil sector.

"A clear parallel can be drawn between current day Libya and Iraq post the US invasion in 2003. Iraqi oil output stabilized since 2007 after a period of sharp output fluctuations and gradual production resumption, with foreign companies returning to the country only in 2009. It took eight years for Iraqi output to return to its pre-invasion levels," Barclays Capital said.

"In conclusion, the problems of Libya will not necessarily be solved by the departure of Gaddafi; indeed, that might just be the start of some long-lived difficulties. We expect the oil market to likely function on the basis of selling the headline before buying the later reality at more leisure. A sudden wave of market bearishness, in the expectation of a swift return of production and then a further wave of extra production, is a view likely to be given up gradually as the new reality proves to be far more complicated," it added.