Lebanon: Not Just a Pipe Dream

Jan 22, 2015 | Jeremy Arbid, Executive
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Even though Lebanon’s first offshore licensing round is on hold indefinitely, each passing month highlights the necessity for transparency and accountability in managing the country’s potential oil and gas resources. When Executive asked questions about the Lebanese firms prequalified to bid for petroleum contracts in its October 2014 issue, it found evidence that Apex Gas Limited exploited loopholes to conceal its corporate identity and that Petroleb blatantly expected government connections would result in it winning a bid.

In conducting this investigation, Executive encountered tremendous resistance from both the government entities organizing the sector and the companies in question. Likewise, Executive found that civil society, with some exceptions, is failing to hold the country’s oil and gas decisionmakers to account, with many NGOs largely uninformed and unaware of the information relevant to transparency and, ultimately, still relatively clueless as to their role in the governance of this sector.