In an interview given to Jennifer Gnana and Massoud Derhally from The National, Dr Carole Nakhle, CEO of Crystol Energy, comments on the decision of French oil major Total to avoid work in the maritime area offshore Lebanon. The Total led consortium with Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek won two offshore blocks – 4 and 9, whereby the latter falls in the ‘disputed’ area – during the first licensing round in Lebanon which was announced in January 2017. According to Dr Nakhle, maritime disputes are not new in the oil industry and they typically take a long time to be resolved. She adds that in the case of Lebanon and Israel, one can only expect the dispute to last much longer.
