© Reuters. The French Total Energies logo on the company’s headquarters in Paris, in a photo from the Reuters archive.
From Laila Bassam
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday that “all indicators are positive,” more than a month after drilling began in an exploratory well in Block 9, one of the blocks adjacent to the newly drawn maritime border between Israel and Israel.
Earlier on Monday, the Lebanese Ministry of Energy said in a statement that a coalition of Total (EPA:) Energies of France, Eni of Italy and Qatar Energy submitted “two applications to participate in the second licensing round to bid on the eighth and tenth blocks in Lebanese marine waters.”
The statement added that the two applications were submitted “one hour before the end of the deadline for submitting applications to participate in the second licensing cycle.”
He said, “The companies that make up the consortium submitting the two applicants are owners of petroleum rights in the fourth and ninth blocks in Lebanese maritime waters.”
Nasrallah said at a celebration marking the anniversary of the Prophet’s birthday, “Our information indicates… that all indicators are positive in Block 9 (the ninth block), and one of the signs of the positive indicators is that the same (companies) operating in Block 9 have submitted a request to take over Block 8 and Block 10.” Experts say that if these companies believed that there was nothing important in Block 9, they would not have come forward to take responsibility for two other blocks.”
Last August, this coalition began drilling an exploratory well in the ninth block, which is one of the blocks adjacent to the newly drawn maritime borders between Lebanon and Israel.
The border was demarcated last year after US-brokered talks.
The deadline for submitting applications for the eighth and tenth parcels has been extended several times over the past years.
Lebanon hopes that gas and oil discoveries will help it emerge from the stifling economic crisis that has caused the local currency to lose more than 98 percent of its value and caused the erosion of the country’s foreign reserves and power outages in cities.
(Reporting by Maya Al-Jubaili – Prepared by Muhammad Ali Faraj for the Arab Bulletin – Editing by Hassan Ammar)
2023-10-02 19:54:00
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