Israel Rejects U.S. Solution on Dispute with Lebanon over Offshore Gas
Israel rejected a proposal by the U.S. to resolve the dispute with Lebanon over the two countries Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), media reports said on Thursday.
According to the Israeli business newspaper the Globes, sources in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected to comment on the matter “due to its sensitivity.”
Lebanon and Israel are bickering over a maritime zone that consists of about 854 square kilometers and suspected energy reserves there could generate billions of dollars.
The Globes reported the dispute will delay Lebanon's exploration of Block 9, an area that is north of Israel's Alon license, which is likely to contain gas reserves similar in scale to Israel's Tamar gas field.
Lebanese officials recently expressed fear that Israel's discovery of a new offshore gas field near Lebanese territorial waters means the Jewish state could siphon some of Lebanon's crude oil.
Lebanon has been slow to exploit its maritime resources compared with other eastern Mediterranean countries. Israel, Cyprus and Turkey are all much more advanced in drilling for oil and gas.
In March 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 34.5 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean, which includes the territorial waters of Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Cyprus.
The U.S. had offered to mediate between the sides in an attempt to reach a solution.
Beirut argues that a maritime map it submitted to the U.N. is in line with an armistice accord drawn up in 1949, an agreement which is not contested by Israel.
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