The growing interest in exploring the Lebanese Basin has been stimulated by recent discoveries of massive gas reserves in neighbouring Mediterranean states. In 2009 Noble Energy discovered off the coast of Haifa the first large natural gas reservoir, known as Tamar, with an estimated quantity of 8 trillion cubic feet (ft3) of gas. A year later, the Leviathan deposit – with a potential of 16 trillion ft3 – was found. The US Geological Survey has estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and around 122 trillion ft3 of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin, off the coast of Lebanon and neighbouring states.(1) The Levant Basin encompasses approximately 83,000 square kilometres (km2) of the eastern Mediterranean.
These deepwater discoveries are considered to be the most important of the past 10 years and have encouraged Lebanon to act quickly. A bundle of legislation was enacted on petroleum industry activities, which are governed by the Offshore Petroleum Resources Law (132/2010). In 2011 the Law on the Delineation and Declaration of the Maritime Regions of the Republic of Lebanon (163/2011) was issued in order to determine the exclusive economic zone in which petroleum industry activities can take place.