Lebanon on Tuesday asked French energy giant TotalEnergies to kickstart gas exploration off its shores, after Israel said the two countries have reached a US-mediated deal to settle their maritime border.<\/p>\n
Lebanon’s search for gas riches in the hydrocarbon-rich eastern Mediterranean had stalled since 2020 over competing claims with Israel over offshore gas fields.<\/p>\n
Following Israel’s announcement on Tuesday, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, met a visiting delegation from TotalEnergies — which was awarded an exploration license in 2018.<\/p>\n
“During the meeting, Mikati called on representatives of TotalEnergies to immediately begin taking operational steps to drill in Lebanese waters,” his office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Lebanon has yet to officially agree to the deal, but Mikati said he hoped a “conclusion would be reached soon” that could pave the way for “gas exploration in Lebanese waters”.<\/p>\n
Lebanon’s energy minister, Walid Fayad, who also attended the meeting, said that “logistical matters take time, but work will start immediately”.<\/p>\n
TotalEnergies is part of a consortium of energy giants awarded a license to explore for gas in two of Lebanon’s 10 blocks, numbers 4 and 9.<\/p>\n
One well drilled in Block 4 in 2020 by TotalEnergies, Eni and Novatek showed only traces but no commercially viable gas deposits.<\/p>\n
Block 9, near the border with Israel, contains the so-called Qana field or Sidon reservoir, and will be a major zone for offshore exploration after a deal is finalised, according to Lebanese officials.<\/p>\n
Lebanon will “get its full rights from the Qana field”, and Israel could receive compensation through Total, said Elias Bou Saab, Lebanon’s lead negotiator in the maritime border talks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lebanon on Tuesday asked French energy giant TotalEnergies to kickstart gas exploration off its shores, after Israel said the two countries have reached a US-mediated deal to settle their maritime border. Lebanon’s search for gas riches in the hydrocarbon-rich eastern Mediterranean had stalled since 2020 over competing claims with Israel over offshore gas fields. Following Israel’s announcement on Tuesday, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, met a visiting delegation from TotalEnergies — which was awarded an exploration license in 2018. “During the meeting, Mikati called on representatives of TotalEnergies to immediately begin taking operational steps to drill in Lebanese waters,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}