Lebanese Energy Minister, Nada Boustani on Friday announced that she granted Total the license to drill Lebanon’s first well in block 4 of the country’s water territories, the National News Agency reported.
Boustani disclosed this during a press in Lebanon conference that the launch of the license and handing it over to the consortium of Total, Eni and Novatek was the first step in the discovery of potential oil and gas reserves in Lebanon.
She said that the vessel scheduled to work on the drilling process would arrive from Egypt in January.
“The drilling process will take two months while we will need additional two months to verify if the discovered material is in commercial quantity or not,” she said.
In Feb. 2018, Lebanon signed its first offshore oil and gas exploration and production contracts for two energy blocks with a consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek.
Boustani, however, announced in April that the launch of Lebanon’s second licensing round for offshore oil and gas exploration in five blocks, adding that the deadline for the submission of offers was Jan. 2020.
However, the country hoped to give a big boost to its economy through offshore energy discovery.
