The petroleum legislative framework for Lebanon

Now that Lebanon has signed the first two exploration and production agreements (EPAs) for offshore oil and gas, companies will prepare the groundwork to start drilling at the beginning of 2019. This achievement is a long time coming. The first oil-related legislation, the Offshore Petroleum Resources Law, was enacted in 2010; the sector’s regulator, the Lebanese Petroleum Administration, started operating back in 2012; the block delineation and the model EPA were enacted as decrees in January 2017, almost four years after they were first drafted; and the petroleum-income tax law—a necessity to complete the Lebanese petroleum fiscal regime—was enacted in October 2017, two years after it was first drafted. This process has taken far too long. Egypt started production of the giant Zohr gas field within three years of finding it. But the constant delays that Lebanon’s oil and gas sector witnessed over the past years—very much interconnected to major