Decoding the oil deal

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is having trouble making up his mind. Or so it seems. On July 1, Berri and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil struck an unexpected deal. The agreement was touted as a bulldozer clearing the final barrier that, for over three years, has blocked the conclusion of Lebanon’s first offshore oil and gas licensing round. The parties, however, have chosen a very odd strategy for building national consensus around their deal. By all accounts, they haven’t shared the details widely, and the terms of the deal coming from the speaker’s side vary depending on what you read. At the time of writing, this looks more like a media stunt than a news development. Coming to terms The search for oil and gas under Lebanese territory began before the territory was technically Lebanese. Some five years prior to Lebanon’s 1943 declaration of independence, the Iraq Petroleum Company drilled an