During a presser he held at the ministry, Bassil said: "Israel now has the ability to reach Leb's oil reserves."
But "the army and the resistance have the capability to protect them," he said. "We won't allow it to encroach on our natural resources."
Bassil urged President Michel Suleiman
...before assuming office as President, he held the position of commander of the Leb Armed Forces. That was after the previous commander, the loathesome Emile Lahoud, took office as president in November of 1998. Likely the next president of Leb will be whoever's commander of the armed forces, too...
and Caretaker Premier
Najib Miqati to hold an extraordinary cabinet session to approve two decrees needed to move the oil exploration process forward, saying "Leb's reputation was at stake."Holding such a session is "politically and constitutionally possible," he said, adding he would coordinate with Suleiman, Speaker Nabih
KnobbyBerri
Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, a member of AMAL, a not very subtle Hizbullah sock puppet...
and Miqati in that regards.
If adopted by the government, the decrees require the approval of the parliament.
Leb has been slow to exploit its maritime resources compared with other eastern Mediterranean countries. Israel, Cyprus and Turkey are all much more advanced in drilling for oil and gas.
Leb and Israel are bickering over a zone that consists of about 854 square kilometers and suspected energy reserves there could generate billions of dollars.
Beirut argues that a maritime map it submitted to the U.N. is in line with an armistice accord drawn up in 1949, an agreement which is not contested by Israel.
In March 2010, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a mean of 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a mean of 34.5 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas in the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean, which includes the territorial waters of Leb, Israel, Syria and Cyprus.
The formation of the Petroleum Authority in November was the first major step in future oil exploration since parliament passed a law in 2011 setting the country's maritime boundary and Exclusive Economic Zone.
The country will witness the first oil exploration process in 2015 and it will take a year to enter the production stage.