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From today’s NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/world/europe/22lockerbie.html?hpw

On Friday, Lord Trefgarne, chairman of the Libyan British Business Council, said Mr. Megrahi’s release had opened the way for Britain’s leading oil companies to pursue multibillion-dollar oil contracts with Libya, which had demanded Mr. Megrahi’s return in talks with British officials and business executives.

Lord Trefgarne told the BBC that talks on oil contracts had “not moved as fast as we would have hoped and expected” since Tony Blair, then prime minister, met in a tent in Libya five years ago with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, and set the terms for the “deal in the desert” that sketched a reconciliation between Colonel Qaddafi’s pariah government and the West.

British business executives had made no secret of their intense lobbying for a prisoner transfer treaty proposed by Mr. Blair and Col. Qaddafi and finally ratified by Britain and Libya in April; before Mr. Megrahi’s cancer diagnosis, that treaty was seen as the most likely avenue for his return to Libya. But his cancer, and a finding by medical specialists that he was not likely to live more than three months, cleared the way for his release on compassionate grounds.

“Perhaps now, with the final resolution of the Lockerbie affair, as far as the Libyans are concerned, maybe they’ll move a bit more swiftly,” Lord Trefgarne said.

Although there was no firm evidence of any quid pro quo between Britain and Libya, the British government acted vigorously on Friday to defend itself against accusations that it paved the way for the Libyan’s release to promote British-based oil companies’ hopes of securing pole position in the international contest for new Libyan oil concessions.

Foreign Minister David Miliband told the BBC that it was “a slur both on myself and the government” to suggest that oil was a factor.