While lucrative petroleum reserves in the Mediterranean’s east are discovered and exploited by neighboring countries, political infighting risks losing Lebanon’s slice of the pie.
Turkey and Israel in the last week have each taken a step forward in exploiting the lucrative offshore oil and gas deposits discovered in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkey signed a contract Wednesday with Shell for offshore oil and gas explorations, while on Monday Israel's gas drilling firm struck a preliminary deal with South Korea's Daewoo to build and operate an offshore LNG (liquid natural gas) facility.
Turkey's move came after the Cyprus government, which is not recognized by Ankara, struck a deal with US energy firm Noble for gas exploration off the southern coast of the divided island of Cyprus.
Many companies have also expressed interest in conducting exploration in Lebanon’s territorial waters. Up to 85 companies, for example, attended the Lebanon Petroleum Exploration Forum last June. They are already forming consortiums to bid for exploration licences.
The rush to strike these deals comes amid the largest oil and gas discovery of the decade. An estimated 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil lies in the Levant Basin Province, according to the US Geological Survey.