Bassil slams Mikati-Berri helicopter photo, renews call for decentralization

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has accused caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker Nabih Berri, without naming them, of obstructing gas exploration for years.

Transocean Barents drilling rig, which had arrived in Block 9 offshore Lebanon earlier this month, will start Thursday searching for gas.

Mikati and Berri were photographed Tuesday smiling in a helicopter that transported them from Beirut's international airport to the drilling rig in Block 9.

"We are entrusted with Lebanon's oil and gas and we will not leave them in the hands of those who have obstructed their exploration for years and who are rushing today to take a picture in a helicopter," Bassil charged.

"Let us build a power plant, a gas facility, a water dam, then take pictures if you want, but let us work," Bassil said.

Former president Michel Aoun who was attending the same FPM dinner during which Bassil gave his speech on Tuesday, said that his son-in-law was the first to launch the gas exploration project and that it was the first article that Aoun included in the first cabinet session that was held during his term as president.

Four years into Lebanon's economic crisis, politicians are betting that a fledgling natural gas industry will revive the economy without reforms requiring major sacrifices from them.

While Bassil and Aoun claimed that they have launched the project, Berri said Tuesday that he had worked for this day for many years by reaching a framework agreement that launched U.S.-mediated negotiations between Lebanon and Israel on their maritime border demarcation.

Under the U.S.-mediated deal signed in October, the disputed waters would be divided along a line straddling the “Qana” natural gas field in the Mediterranean. Gas production would be based on the Lebanese side, but Israel would be compensated for gas extracted from its side of the line under a separately signed deal between TotalEnergies and Israel.

While Lebanon's leaders are trying to take credit for the country's natural reserves, the lira, which had been pegged at 1,500 to the dollar for a quarter century, now goes for around 90,000 on the black market, state electricity is nearly non-existent, public schools and hospitals can barely afford to keep their lights on, and the lira incomes of public sector workers and pensions of retirees, who together make up a large sector of the population, have become nearly worthless.

"Today we are working on a broad decentralization law and a trust fund law that would improve regional and national development," Bassil said.

"Keserwan, Jbeil, Akkar, the Bekaa and the South would no longer have to wait for funding from the state and would secure their own revenues and find solutions for waste, roads and renewable energy."