Report: Lebanon Recovers 530 Square Kilometers of its EEZ
Lebanon was able to restore 530 square kilometers of a maritime zone that it considers it to be within its Exclusive Economic Zone, As Safir newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Lebanon and Israel are bickering over a zone that consists of about 854 square kilometers and suspected energy reserves there could generate billions of dollars.
The United States and the United Nations acknowledged Lebanon’s rights to control the 530 square kilometer disputed area after prolonged diplomatic and political efforts, the daily said.
“We should swiftly kick off the oil exploration process,” Speaker Nabih Berri said in comments published in As Safir.
He noted that the Lebanese should stop quarreling among each other as Israel took advantage and started exploring for oil and gas while Lebanon remains behind in this matter.
On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour pointed out that a report will be referred to Prime Minister Najib Miqati regarding the demarcation of Lebanon’s EEZ.
He noted that a meeting held by the technical expert committee on the EEZ didn’t discuss the offshore natural gas fields that were discovered near the northern city of Israel, Haifa.
The Israel Opportunity energy exploration partnership said that prospecting at the Pelagic group of deep-sea fields, west of Haifa, showed a potential 189 billion cubic meters (6.7 trillion cubic feet) of gas and 1.4 billion barrels of oil there.
In March 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 34.5 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean, which includes the territorial waters of Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Cyprus.
Lebanon has been slow to exploit its maritime resources compared with other eastern Mediterranean countries. Israel, Cyprus and Turkey are all much more advanced in drilling for oil and gas.
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