Lee Smith - Gas Pains

Lee Smith
tabletmag.com
27 July '11

http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/72836/gas-pains/

Recently discovered gas and oil fields could make Israel one of the world’s largest energy producers. That threatens Iran’s power, which is why its agents in Lebanon are manufacturing a border dispute.

Now that Israel has discovered what appear to be huge gas and oil fields off its Mediterranean coast, Hezbollah general secretary Hassan Nasrallah and Beirut’s Hezbollah-allied ministers are labeling the Jewish state’s internationally recognized maritime borders as an “aggression” against Lebanon—even though it seems that the Arab country may have plenty of gas and oil off its coast, too. Lebanon’s real problem is that few investors want to take a chance spending billions of dollars exploring for energy in a country run by a terrorist organization. As a result, Hezbollah, cut off from normal sources of global capital, wants to do its best to keep investors away from Israel, too—by threatening war. And American policymakers are concerned that if Hezbollah’s newly invented sea-border dispute between Lebanon and Israel isn’t solved, the oil and gas fields will turn into an underwater Shebaa Farms—the piece of real estate that has served as Hezbollah’s casus belli since Israel’s 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon.

The Tamar field, discovered in 2009 roughly 50 miles off Haifa, is estimated to contain 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, while the Leviathan field, discovered further west in June 2010, is double that at 18 trillion cubic feet, one of the largest offshore finds in the last decade. And yet much more important, a former Royal Dutch Shell chief scientist who’s now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives “has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers,” according to an Energy Tribune report earlier this year. It turns out that the oil-shale deposits in Israel’s Shfela Basin, 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, hold some 250 billion barrels of oil—roughly equal to Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves. In other words, Israel may well become a player in the highly competitive field of energy-producing nations, which includes Hezbollah’s patron, Iran.

Israel argues that the maritime border should begin at a 90-degree angle from the coastline, while Lebanon says that it should continue in the same direction as the land border. But if Lebanon were to insist on that principle across the board, says David Wurmser, a former consultant to Noble Energy, a Houston-based firm with a large stake in the Tamar and Leviathan fields, “it would lose a lot of its territorial water to Syria. It’s clear who’s calling the shots here.”

The twist is that even as the Lebanese government gussies up phony challenges to Israel’s maritime borders, the map it submitted to the United Nations does not actually challenge Israel’s claims to the biggest prize that the Eastern Mediterranean has ever had to offer. If Syria has its own reasons for interfering with Lebanon’s border issues, so does Iran, it seems, which is using its Lebanese asset to keep a potential industrial rival in check. That is, the dispute is not personal: It’s not about Zionism, or liberating Jerusalem. This is not ideological, but strictly about business.

Doubtless, many in the Middle East believe the ideologies to which they’ve sworn their lives. And yet that same part of the Arab world that produced Wahabbism—the Persian Gulf—is also most in favor of normalization of relations with Israel. Indeed, the Saudis themselves have reportedly cooperated with Jerusalem on security issues regarding Iran—because what really matters to Arab rulers is holding on to their rule.

WSJ - Behind the Israeli-Lebanese Gas Row

Ariel Cohen
Wall Street Journal/Europe
26 July '11

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576467770696928708.html

Hezbollah has made no hydrocarbon discoveries, but seems eager to discover a new border conflict.

Tensions are rising in the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Lebanon, this time over roughly 430 square miles of contested waters that contain considerable underwater gas reserves. Iran, Hezbollah and Syria are all interested in a war with Israel, each for their own reasons. Tehran and Damascus want to save the embattled regime of Bashar Assad, while Hezbollah seeks to protect its top officials from charges that they were involved in the assassination of late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A new war in the Middle East would aid all these goals—and be a disaster for the U.S., already embroiled in withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq and a military operation in Libya.

Both Israel and Lebanon have trillions of cubic feet of underwater natural gas and can benefit tremendously from these resources. All they need is the goodwill to negotiate a sea-border demarcation agreement. This usually occurs through bilateral negotiations or mutually agreed arbitration—not through U.N. border-dispute mechanisms, as Lebanon is now demanding.

In 2000, the U.N. meticulously traced the Israel-Lebanon land border when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon. At the time, the U.N. did not establish a maritime border between the two countries and no one seemed to mind. Lebanon has made no hydrocarbon discoveries since, but it does seem eager to discover another border conflict: It's only now that Israel has identified substantial natural gas in the Tamar and Leviathan fields that Hezbollah, the Iranian and Syrian regimes' long arm in Lebanon, has decided to make an issue of the maritime borders.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated government has called Israel's proposed border an "aggression" and is now threatening to attack any Israeli gas projects—even those in undisputed waters. It wants the U.N. to arbitrate the border dispute under the Law of the Sea Treaty, to which Israel is not even a party. More troubling still, the U.S. State Department has reportedly endorsed Hezbollah's preferred solution of throwing the matter to the U.N.—despite the fact that the U.S. never ratified the treaty either.

The stakes are high for the U.S. and Israel. Hezbollah is armed with Chinese-designed, Iranian-made C-802 anti-ship missiles that could be devastating against future Israeli off-shore gas platforms and tankers. Hezbollah also has sea-born commando units.

The State Department's fear of a flare-up in the Mediterranean and its newfound preoccupation with the Law of the Sea Treaty should not result in coddling a terrorist organization and the state it is running. Washington would do better to stand by its democratic ally and reject Hezbollah's Tehran- and Damascus-inspired position, which can only further escalate tensions in the Levant. Washington should clarify that the two countries need to settle the border dispute between themselves—and both enjoy the benefits from their underwater natural resources.

Mr. Cohen is senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.


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The New--And Growing--Source Of Conflict Between Israel And Lebanon Is Not On Land

Daled Amos
02 November '10

Is Lebanon looking to add to its world records with the largest natural-gas find in the world in 2009?

An article in the Christian Science Monitor reports:

The recent discoveries of massive gas fields off the coast of northern Israel, tantalizingly close to Lebanese coastal waters, has stirred cash-strapped Lebanon to accelerate efforts to begin its own oil and gas exploration.

But the prospect of previously undiscovered fossil fuel riches off the coasts of Lebanon and Israel risks becoming a new source of conflict as well as an economic windfall for the two warring neighbors.

“This is something big and potentially landscape-changing economically, financially, and politically,” says Nassib Ghobril, head of economic research and analysis at Byblos Bank in Beirut.

Last year, a US-Israeli consortium discovered the Tamar gas field 55 miles off the coast of northern Israel, which contains an estimated 8.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas – the largest natural-gas find in the world in 2009. Earlier this year, a field called Leviathan was discovered in the same area with an initial estimate of 16 trillion cubic feet of gas.

But there are likely more untapped fields; the US Geological Survey (USGS) said in March that the Levantine Basin, which includes the territorial waters of Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and Cyprus, could hold as much as 122 trillion cubic feet of gas – and 1.7 billion barrels of oil.

According to the article, Lebanon is strapped for cash and heavily in debt--and would love to have access to these reserves, not to mention others that may be just waiting to be discovered. More to the point, it is not yet known whether the gas field extends into Lebanon's territorial waters.

(Read full post)

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Internal Conflict in Lebanon Over Control of Oil and Gas Resources

H. Varulkar
MEMRI
12 July '10

Introduction

The recent discovery of a large natural gas field off the Israeli coast, near Haifa, sparked an intense conflict in Lebanon between the camps of Prime Minster Sa'd Al-Hariri and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri – an ally of Hizbullah – over the control of Lebanon's potential oil and natural gas resources, which could generate enormous profits for the country.

At the same time, accusations began to be heard, especially from Hizbullah and its political allies, that Israel is stealing Lebanon's natural resources and that the gas reservoir it has discovered extends into Lebanon's exclusive economic zone.[1] Senior officials from Hizbullah and the opposition warned that the organization would not hesitate to use every means, including its weapons, to defend Lebanon's natural riches. Figures in the March 14 Forces stated in response that Hizbullah was simply looking for another excuse to hold on to its arms.

It should be mentioned that, following the Israeli gas discovery, Lebanon expedited the process of appealing to the U.N. to officially demarcate its exclusive economic zone and to delineate its maritime borders with neighboring countries, except for Israel.[2] The presidents of Syria and Lebanon decided on June 15, 2010 that the two countries would begin demarking the maritime border between them even before completing the demarcation of the land border, in order to settle the question of their respective rights to offshore oil and gas.[3]

Who Will Lead the Legislation of Lebanon's Natural Resources Bill?

A few days after Israel announced the discovery of an enormous gas reservoir at the Leviathan drilling site off the Haifa coast, Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri launched an attack on Israel, accusing it of stealing Lebanon's gas and oil deposits, and of ignoring the fact that the gas reservoir extends into Lebanese waters. Berri stressed that "the discovery of [this] gas reservoir obligates Lebanon to act quickly in defense of its rights," and called on the Lebanese parliament and government to declare a campaign of "economic resistance" in defense of the country's natural resources.[4]

Concurrently with the attack on Israel, Berri launched an attack on Lebanese Prime Minister Sa'd Al-Hariri and his government, whom he accused of delaying the passage of a law to regulate the management and exploitation of Lebanon's natural resources.[5] Moreover, Berri had his political advisor, MP 'Ali Hassan Khalil, prepare a draft law on this issue and submit it to the parliament.[6] This was seen as an attempt to circumvent the authority of the government, which in March 2010 appointed a committee of ministers, headed by Al-Hariri, to draft a natural resources bill.

(Read full report)

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