error loading shared libraries running as non root user

I am trying to run splunk as a non-root user, but every time i start splunk I get the error "splunkd: error while loading shared libraries: libxslt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"

I have created a user and group named "splunk" to run the server as. I have given it rights to read/write /opt/splunk. Even if I do:

$ sudo -u splunk bash
bash$ source /opt/splunk/bin/setSplunkEnv
bash$ /opt/splunk/bin/splunk start

I still get that error. As long as i set the $SPLUNK_HOME using setSplunkEnv, ldd correctly finds all the libraries on the system or in the /opt/splunk/lib/ directory.

It does work fine when I start it as root.

To make things more complicated, my sysadmins tell me that having /opt/splunk/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf breaks their Red Hat Network update stuff so they removed it. So, I tried the following before starting splunk:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/splunk/lib

which also results in ldd finding all the libraries, but I still get the error when starting splunkd.

$ sudo -u splunk bash
bash$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/splunk/lib
bash$ source /opt/splunk/bin/setSplunkEnv
bash$ /opt/splunk/bin/splunk start

Splunk> All batbelt. No tights.

Checking Prerequisites...
        Checking http port [8000]: open
        Checking mgmt port [8089]: open
        Checking configuration...  Done.
        Checking index directory...  Done.
        Checking databases...
        Validated databases: _audit, _blocksignature, _internal, _thefishbucket, history, main, sample, summary, test
        Checking for SELinux
All Preliminary checks passed.

splunkd: error while loading shared libraries: libxslt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory