What lies beneath

Lebanon has missed several opportunities to grow its nascent oil and gas industry at an ideal pace, but now regional developments threaten not just further delays, but also permanent losses unless the country acts to protect its national interests. The new urgency stems primarily from two principal events. The first was last summer’s discovery of the giant Zohr gas field off Egypt’s northern coast by Italy’s ENI, a find estimated by some to have doubled the North African country’s natural gas reserves overnight. It also significantly increased the likelihood of commercially viable deposits in nearby offshore acreage belonging to Cyprus, Lebanon and Israel. This has sparked renewed interest in this section of the Eastern Mediterranean basin from major international oil companies. The second event – in part at least a consequence of the first – was the Cypriot government’s approval in late February of a two-year extension for an ENI-led