Lebanon's energy ministry has launched the country's third oil and gas exploration licensing round, with bids for the nine blocks offered due by 2 July 2024.
On offer are all unlicensed blocks in the country's maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ), its ministry of energy said, namely blocks 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the northern half of the EEZ, and blocks 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 in the southern half.
Block 9 was awarded to a consortium comprising TotalEnergies, Italy's Eni and Russia's Novatek as part of the first licensing round in 2017. Novatek has since been replaced in the consortium by state-owned QatarEnergy (QE).
Companies interested in participating will first need to notify Lebanon's oil and gas regulator LPA, and pay a 'retrieval fee' by 25 June, one week before the bid submission deadline.
In the previous two licensing rounds, interested parties were required to submit bids as part of consortiums comprising at least three companies, with each bid including technical and financial proposals. No specific mention of this was made in the announcement for this latest round.
Of the nine blocks, only 3, 6 and 7 are newly offered acreage, while the other six have been included in previous rounds. Of these, 1, 2 and 5 have never attracted bids.
TotalEnergies, Eni and QE in October submitted bids to explore in offshore blocks 8 and 10, just hours before the deadline in the second licensing round. But with Lebanon and the companies yet to agree on the terms offered, the acreage remains open for investment.
Third time lucky?
Lebanon's offshore exploration has been fraught with disappointment. Although it managed to secure the participation of major players like TotalEnergies and Eni in its first licensing round, exploratory drilling at the two blocks they and Novatek were awarded, blocks 4 and 9, failed to find commercial quantities of oil or gas.
The consortium's first well in block 4 was confirmed in April 2020 to have come up dry. The well, Byblos-1, indicated the presence of small amounts of gas, but not enough to make it commercially viable.
Lebanon confirmed in October that a well the consortium, now with QE, drilled in block 9 in August also failed to find any oil or gas. At around the same time, the consortium relinquished its rights to block 4, making it available to be auctioned in this third round.
Beirut will be hoping for better fortunes in this third round. But the heightened geopolitical tension in Lebanon's immediate vicinity, triggered by the 7 October attack by Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Israel, and Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza in response, could hurt its chances of attracting the kind of interest it is envisaging.
