Wissam Zahabi is exhausted. It’s 5 p.m. He arrived in Beirut an hour after sunrise from a fact-finding mission in Uganda and went straight to work. In the evening, he has a conference to attend. It’s a busy day for a man who described himself and his colleagues as “idle.”
His quote, however, needs to be understood in context. Zahabi is currently the president of Lebanon’s Petroleum Administration, a government body established in 2012 to regulate the country’s oil and gas sector. Back then, the pace of activity to create the sector was akin to lightning by Lebanese standards. A law passed in 2010 called for creating the LPA and naming its six board members. Two years later, the six were appointed. (By comparison, it took five years to appoint a board for the telecoms regulator and an electricity regulator called for in a 2002 law still exists only on paper.) The board should be busy watching over oil and gas companies searching for hydrocarbons in Lebanon’s slice of the natural gas-rich eastern Mediterranean. It’s not.
When Najib Mikati resigned in March 2013, his Cabinet had some unfinished business related to oil and gas, namely passing two crucial decrees: One carves Lebanon’s offshore into blocks open for license, and another outlines technical details for how the round should proceed — the tender protocol — and includes a model contract to be signed between the state and the winning bidders. Despite the lack of a functioning government, in May 2013, then-caretaker Energy and Water Minister Gebran Bassil opened Lebanon’s first offshore oil and gas licensing round anyway. Investors were lined up. Some of the industry’s so-called supermajors such as Chevron, Total, ENI and Shell had prequalified in April 2013 to participate in the licensing round.
Bassil’s move put Lebanon in an odd position. The licensing round was open, but without the decrees, companies could not submit offers. As the round’s scheduled closure date drew nearer with the decrees still being ignored by the Cabinet, Bassil delayed it a few months. A few months later, he delayed again. And then again. Each time, he chose a specific date for the round to close. When a new government came to power in 2014, Bassil’s successor shifted tact. Closure of the licensing round is now slated for “a maximum period of six months from the date of the adoption of the two decrees.” Since that 2014 decision, however, efforts to begin offshore exploration are moving at the more familiar pace of standard Lebanese bureaucracy.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
