Lebanese Speaker to Energy Firms: Ignore Pressure, Resume East Med Drilling

Lebanese House Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday called on French, Italian and Russian energy companies to ignore external pressure and resume their exploratory drilling for oil and gas in Lebanon’s territorial waters, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. “There is no excuse to stop working in Lebanon, especially that companies will work in an undisputed area of the sea,” Berri said. Last year, France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek stopped drilling in Lebanon’s offshore Bloc 4 after failing to find commercially viable amounts of petrochemicals. Drilling in Bloc 9, which straddles waters that are disputed with Israel, was postponed until Oct. 22, 2022, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Lebanese Petroleum Administration. In September 2021, the London-based hydrocarbon exploration and production company Energean commissioned the US Halliburton company to drill three to five wells in the Karish gas field, near Israel’s disputed maritime border with Lebanon. In 2020, Israel and Lebanon began US-brokered negotiations to resolve their maritime border dispute, but the talks broke down after Lebanon expanded its claims from 860 square kilometers to a 2,300-square km area that includes part of the Karish North field. Berri said US energy envoy Amos Hochstein will be in Lebanon next week in an attempt to resume indirect negotiations with Israel over the Mediterranean border dispute.