@the100thmonkey
“While the rest of the world should be able to handle the loss of Libya’s light sweet oil, it poses severe problems for Europe’s already troubled refining sector, which relies on high quality crudes to make any money at all. Loss of Libya’s oil production has exposed the escalating problem for European refiners trapped between increasingly stringent standards for transportation fuels and their own lack of investment in upgrading and especially desulphurisation capacity as a result of poor profitability.”
Link to Commodities Now.
They could import more from Saudi Arabia (or other countries), but their oil contains too much sulfur for their refineries to make transport fuels under the current regulations. The market for light (skewed towards more volatile hydrocarbons), sweet (low sulfur) crude apparently has little slack, as it is the least common and most valuable type of crude oil.