Activist group warns Israeli leaders against ‘playing with time’ in offshore territorial dispute with Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group released a video suggesting that Israel’s offshore natural gas industry will come under attack unless the Jewish state resolves a maritime border dispute with Beirut.
The group released a video on Sunday showing drone footage of ships and production platforms involved in exploiting Israel’s huge offshore gas fields. The video also showed the coordinates of each featured location. It began with the words of a recent speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warning that “playing with time is useless” in the territorial dispute.
According to the video, the footage was shot on Saturday and June 9. The footage was reportedly captured at Karish, a field in disputed waters where London-based upstream company Energean plans to start pumping gas under a contract with the Israeli government later this month. year.
Video footage released today July 31, 2022 by the Islamic Resistance #Hezbollah military media in Lebanon. The images come from the drones sent on June 9 by the resistance to #Karish offshore gas field in Lebanese international waters where Israel is preparing to steal Lebanese gas https://t.co/o8qHJ3kQvW https://t.co/ALWEhzxgHwpic.twitter.com/xZxrbVhPZU
— Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان (@Marwa__Osman) July 31, 2022
The territorial dispute escalated after Energean’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel arrived in Karish in June. The field is located about 90 km west of Haifa, near the major Israeli gas developments Leviathan and Tamar, and is estimated to contain more than 1.8 trillion cubic feet of fuel.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun warned at the time that any attempt to exploit the gas fields in the disputed area without first resolving the dispute would be considered a “provocation and aggressive action.” West Jerusalem insisted that the Karish bloc is entirely within Israel’s exclusive economic zone, as recognized by the United Nations, and is not subject to the maritime dispute between the countries.
The United States mediates the negotiations between Lebanon and Israel. In fact, the Hezbollah video was released hours before US envoy Amos Hochstein met with Lebanese leaders in Beirut. “Achieving a resolution is both necessary and possible, but can only be achieved through negotiation and diplomacy,” the US State Department said in a statement on Saturday.
The stakes are high for Lebanon. Participating in the gas boom in the Levant Basin would potentially help the country alleviate an energy crisis that has led to frequent power cuts. Revenue generated from contracts with gas producers could also help accelerate Lebanon’s recovery from its financial meltdown, which has dragged on since 2019.
READ MORE:
US helps Israel prepare for military ‘escalation’
Israel, which was previously considered hydrocarbon-poor, went from a net importer of fossil fuels to self-sufficient after US upstream company Noble Energy and other explorers began extracting gas in the Levant in 2000 The Leviathan is estimated to hold 18 billion cubic feet of gas, and its development helped Israel become a major fuel exporter in 2019.
You can share this story on social media:
rt Gt