The Transocean Barents offshore drilling platform arrived in Block 9 off the Lebanese coast on Wednesday morning, and in the coming weeks, it will begin to search for gas, Lebanese authorities announced.
The maritimetraffic.com, a website that tracks the positions of seacraft, confirmed the announcement, currently showing the rig several miles off the shore of Lebanon.
According to the Lebanese news site Naharnet, the French firm TotalEnergies, in agreement with its partners Eni and QatarEnergy, had signed a contract to begin drilling and exploring for gas in late August in waters off crisis-hit Lebanon.
Lebanese Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad said that TotalEnergies estimates the presence of a vast gas field in Block 9.
“We hope that Lebanon will become an oil state,” Fayyad told reporters in Beirut, adding that the results of the drilling are expected in two or three months.
Lebanon obtained the block where the drilling platform arrived in a highly controversial deal with Israel signed last October. The previous Israeli government, led by former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, unilaterally authorized the agreement but refused to put it before a Knesset vote due to fears that opponents of the deal, both in the opposition and the government, would strike it down. While Lapid called the deal a "tremendous achievement for the State of Israel," opponents said it was a capitulation to Hezbollah and a prize for terrorism.
According to the deal, the disputed waters on the border would be divided along a line along the “Qana” natural gas field in the Mediterranean. Gas production would be based on the Lebanese side, but Israel would be compensated for gas extracted from its side of the line under a separately signed deal between TotalEnergies and Israel.