Report: Salam Says Oil Committee Won't Meet Unless Data is Complete
Prime Minster Tammam Salam “broke the silence” with regard to the latest agreement between the Free Patriotic Movement and the AMAL party on the oil excavation file, and expressed his annoyance over the “unideal manner” that the agreement was struck between the two, As Safir daily reported on Monday.
Media reports said over the weekend that the agreement between the two parties did not meet the approval of the PM and that Salam was disappointed that he was not briefed beforehand.
“I will not be calling for a meeting of the ministerial committee before the file is fully addressed in a transparent and clear manner and all its requirements are complete,” Salam told the daily.
He pointed out that the disagreement between the FPM and AMAL “were not over a priority of which blocs to excavate first but has other goals, which requires an integrated path and entails clear decisions.”
“I am trying to have the full data on the issue,” added the PM.
The FPM and the AMAL met in Ain el-Tineh recently and announced that they have settled their dispute over the excavation of Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas reserves.
The disagreement between the two parties has hindered agreements on energy extraction for years.
For his part, Speaker Nabih Berri expressed his resentment to al-Joumhouria daily at what he described “the renewed disruption of the oil file” and warned that obstructing it again only serves Israel's interests.
Lebanon and Israel are bickering over a zone that consists of about 854 square kilometers and suspected energy reserves that could generate billions of dollars.
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.
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.
In August 2014, the government postponed for the fifth time the first round of licensing for gas exploration over a political dispute.
The disagreements were over the designation of blocks open for bidding and the terms of a draft exploration agreement.
Lebanese officials have continuously warned that Israel's exploration of new offshore gas fields near Lebanese territorial waters means the Jewish state is syphoning some of Lebanon's crude oil.
Beirut argues that a maritime map it submitted to the U.N. is in line with an armistice accord drawn up in 1949, an agreement which is not contested by Israel
Source: Naharnet
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