Legislation in progress

Recent news that rival political parties agreed on a vision for Lebanon’s oil and gas sector was met with worried optimism – an over three year wait for pending decrees to move the first offshore licensing round forward may be nearing an end. Until early July it seemed that oil and gas would continue to languish at the lowest rungs of the government’s priority ladder. The politically-induced freeze on oil and gas might not be ending anytime soon (see cover story). But if the sector is to move forward the government will need to resolve a number of legislative details. Executive wondered what stage the Lebanese Petroleum Administration (LPA), the sector’s regulator, has reached in preparing necessary decrees and laws, and of its take on the added value of newly available seismic data. It had, after all, been nearly a year since the last time Executive reached out to the