- BEIRUT: Lebanon has asked the United Nations to protect the country’s gas reserves along the maritime border with Israel, after a huge gas field was discovered off Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
The appeal was part of a growing dispute between the two over natural resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean.
The United Nations demarcated the land border separating Israel and Lebanon in 2000, but there is no official naval border separating the warring countries. In recent months, Lebanon has accused Israel of drilling in fields that extend into Lebanon, an allegation Israel denies.
“Some of the discovered wells are in joint fields between Lebanon” and Israel, Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali Shami said late Tuesday in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging that Lebanese interests be protected.
Lebanon has not released evidence that Israel’s gas finds extend into Lebanese territory, though it says it sent maps to the UN in 2010 proving this.
Last week, Texas-based Noble Energy Inc. announced that an estimated 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas were found in a field off Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
Noble Energy maps show the fields to be entirely within Israel’s territorial waters.
The militant Hezbollah group, which is part of the Lebanese government, has accused Israel of stealing gas from Lebanon and vowed to defend Lebanese resources with an arsenal of thousands of rockets like the ones it rained on Israel during a 2006 war.
