The giant French company, Total Energies, said yesterday it will begin its oil and gas exploration operations in Lebanon’s Qana field in 2023.
The announcement was made during a meeting between Lebanese President, Michel Aoun, and a company delegation which arrived in the capital city of Beirut on Tuesday.
“The company will install the drilling platform in 2023, based on the texts of the agreement with the Lebanese Petroleum Administration,” the Lebanese Presidency said in a statement.
During the meeting, Aoun urged the French delegation to start the excavation in the field’s “block 9 as soon as possible to make up for the time lost during indirect negotiations to demarcate the maritime border.”
The Lebanese-French agreement comes a week after Israel and Lebanon reached a US-brokered agreement over a disputed zone in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where natural gas fields are located.
Lebanese authorities said recently they were hoping that oil and gas exploration would generate revenues to mitigate the repercussions of the country’s ongoing economic crisis.
