BEIRUT, Jan. 9, 2022 (Xinhua) Lebanese parliamentarian and (Hezbollah) parliamentary bloc member Hussein Hajj Hassan on Sunday accused the United States of preventing his country from extracting oil and gas for “political reasons”.
This came according to the official Lebanese National News Agency, in a speech by Hajj Hassan during his meeting with officials of public administrations and institutions in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate in eastern Lebanon.
Hajj Hassan said, “We are going through difficult conditions in the country, which have internal causes related to the economic system and the economic policy followed, and external circumstances related to the siege and sanctions.”
Lebanon has been facing a financial, monetary and economic crisis for two years, which the World Bank considers “the most severe and cruel in the world,” at a time when the United States imposes sanctions on Hezbollah and classifies it as a “terrorist organization.”
Hajj Hassan said that “Lebanon is not a poor country, and it has oil and gas that America is preventing from using for political reasons.”
He added, “If Lebanon had been allowed to extract oil and gas, it would have been able to solve many of its problems, even if it had domestic and foreign debts, and even if there were unfortunately in Lebanon a number of leaders and officials who practiced corruption.”
On February 9, 2018, the Lebanese government signed contracts for the first time with 3 international companies, namely, France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek, to explore for oil and gas in Blocks 4 and 9 out of 10 offshore blocks that constitute the Lebanon Economic Zone. The exploration work has not yet been completed.
The Lebanese Minister of Energy, Walid Fayyad, said on December 29 that the Total Company links the exploration for gas and oil in the offshore Block No. 9 in the territorial waters of southern Lebanon with the demarcation of the maritime border with Israel.
He pointed out that “the French are not ready to start drilling the well, and therefore there is a talk that must take place in this direction to obtain a kind of security immunity so that drilling can begin.”
Lebanon and Israel, under the auspices of the United Nations and the mediation of Washington, held 5 indirect negotiation sessions between October 2020 and May 2021 to discuss the demarcation of the disputed maritime borders, but the sixth round was postponed indefinitely due to differences over the technical standards to be followed to complete the demarcation.
And (Total) completed drilling the first well in Block 4, but it was not clear that there was a commercial gas or oil reservoir, while drilling work was supposed to start in Block 9 in the South in 2020.
Hajj Hassan considered that “the biggest problem affecting the economic situation in the country is the problem of electricity.”
He added, “There were promises to import gas from Egypt and electricity from Jordan through Syria at the beginning of this year, but so far the American veto has not been lifted, and gas and electricity have not been exempted from the unjust, aggressive and warlike law called Caesar’s Law.”
He pointed out that the US ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, said that she had contacted Lebanese President Michel Aoun and told him that Lebanon might import Egyptian gas and electricity from Jordan through Syria (..), but America has not fulfilled its promises so far.
Lebanon had informed the US embassy in Beirut of its country’s agreement to exempt the project to supply Lebanon with Jordanian electricity and Egyptian gas through Syria from sanctions under the US “Caesar Act” that prohibits cooperation with Syria.
The energy and oil ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon had agreed last September and October to supply Lebanon with electricity from Jordan and natural gas from Egypt through the Arab Gas Pipeline to solve the electricity sector crisis in Lebanon, which incurred losses in the state treasury exceeding 40 billion dollars.
