Will Offshore Gas Spark New Lebanon-Israel Conflict?
As exploration and exploitation of offshore gas fields in Lebanese waters has yet to get going, concerns have been raised that bordering Israeli fields could serve as a pretext for Israel to steal Lebanese gas.
On July 5, acting Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil announced that for the first time ever, Israel could, intentionally or as a result of its legitimate gas extraction operations in the Mediterranean Sea, steal Lebanon’s share of this commodity. Three days later, Bassil visited the Lebanese president, the acting prime minister and the speaker of parliament to ask that they quickly hold two extraordinary cabinet and parliament sessions in order to pass the remaining laws needed for Lebanon to begin awarding international companies exploration rights in Lebanon’s economic zone in the Mediterranean. This is the only way for Lebanon to safeguard its offshore resources and prevent them from being appropriated by others.
An official source at the Lebanese Ministry of Energy explained to Al-Monitor that the problem raised by the minister was not an issue of concern until recently because Israel had so far limited its gas exploration and extraction activities to the Leviathan-1, Dalit-1, Tamar and Tanin-1 fields, which all are relatively far from Lebanon’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
The closest among them, Tanin-1, lies tens of kilometers off the Lebanese border and its exploitation has no bearing at all on Lebanon’s zone and its riches. But, in the last few weeks, Israel announced its intention to begin exploiting a new field dubbed Karish-1, which is estimated to be 150 square kilometers (58 square kilometers) in size, with surveys projecting it to hold 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. However, the most worrisome attribute of this field is that it is very close to the border area between the Israeli and Lebanese EEZs. Its farthest point lies 15 to 17 kilometers (9.3 to 10.6 miles) from the Lebanese zone, while its closest point is located only 4 kilometers away (2½ miles).
The same official further elaborated that the new Israeli field was adjacent to two of the three blocks that lie on the border between the Lebanese and Israeli zones in the Mediterranean. It should be noted here that Lebanon’s EEZ stretches over 22,000 square kilometers (8,500 square miles) and is divided into 10 blocks that were demarcated based upon the results of surveys commissioned by the Lebanese Energy Ministry. Three of those blocks, numbers 8, 9 and 10, are located adjacent to the Israeli zone along a west-to-east axis. Our source also confirmed that the Karish-1 field was only 4 kilometers (2½ miles) from Block 8; 6 kilometers from Block 9 and 9 kilometers (5½ miles) from a natural gas reservoir that scans revealed is present within Lebanon’s Block 9.
