State-run Libya Oil Holding on Tuesday announced it had bought subsidiaries of Shell in Sudan, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

Company president Ali Shamekh said the deal with the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch Shell concerns a total of 240 petrol stations in the three countries. He did not give the value of the deal.

Libya Oil Holding has also struck an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government to build a 140 kilometre (87 mile) pipeline on the Atlantic coast, Shamekh said.

The 300-million-dollar pipeline is due to link the Muanda and Matadi regions in the extreme west of the DRC.

Libya Holding Oil, which runs more than 1,000 petrol stations across Africa, has invested massively in the continent in the past year, also buying subsidiaries of Exxon Mobile in Tunisia and Morocco