Offshore drilling rig arrives in Lebanese waters ahead of work near the border with Israel
Lebanese Cabinet ministers say an offshore drilling rig has arrived at its destination in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon’s coast and will start its search for gas in the coming weeks
BEIRUT — An offshore drilling rig arrived at its destination in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon’s coast and will start operations in the coming weeks to search for gas, cabinet ministers said Wednesday.
The rig is expected to begin drilling this month in Lebanese waters near the border with Israel after the two countries reached a deal last year on their maritime border. Lebanon and Israel have formally been at war since Israel’s creation in 1948.
Cash-strapped Lebanon hopes that future gas discoveries will help the small Mideast nation pull itself out of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history.
Caretaker Minister of Transport Ali Hamie wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the rig arrived Wednesday morning at the location where it is scheduled to begin work. The rig faces the southern port city of Tyre.
“We hope that Lebanon will become an oil state,” Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayyad told reporters in Beirut, adding that the results of the drilling are expected in two or three months.
TotalEnergies said in a statement that the rig, Transocean Barents, is now at around 120 kilometers (75 miles) off the coast of Beirut, and the first helicopter that will transport teams to and from the rig is at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport.
“The arrival of the equipment marks an important step in the preparation of the drilling of the exploration well" this month, TotalEnergies said.
In 2017, Lebanon approved licenses for an international consortium including France’s TotalEnergies, Italy’s
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