A consortium led by TotalEnergies will start drilling for oil and gas off the coast of Lebanon at the beginning of September, the country’s caretaker energy minister Walid Fayyad said on Tuesday.
The consortium, which includes Italy’s partners ENI and QatarEnergy has assigned a rig for the offshore southern bloc known as Bloc 9.
“The rig will start working in Lebanon in September … before the end of the year we will know if there is a discovery,” Fayyad told reporters on the sidelines of the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi.
“The results of the drilling operations will be announced at the end of this year,” said Romain de la Martinière, the General Manager of Exploration and Production at TotalEnergies, following a meeting in Beirut with caretaker Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamieh.
Hamieh for his part reassured that Beirut’s port and airport are “fully prepared” to play an “active role” in the oil and gas exploration file.
Lebanese officials have announced higher estimates.
Many politicians in Lebanon have pinned hopes of a way out of crisis on gas exploration, but analysts have said Beirut, which is in deep financial crisis, cannot count on gas alone to bail it out.
Lebanon should manage expectations when it comes to its offshore gas wealth to avoid another disappointment similar to the 2013 experience which ended in 2020 when the first well drilled in block 4 came out dry. To the contrary, it should only focus on moving forward in the path of the much-needed reforms at all levels. The government and concerned ministries should continue working to build up institutional support for the oil and gas sector, and ensure transparency and accountability throughout the whole process, especially when it comes to information sharing and dissemination of companies’ findings to the public in any offshore block.
