"Before It's Too Late," Lebanon May Okay Natural Gas Drilling -- July 5, 2016

Bloomberg is reporting:

Lebanon may soon approve measures to push ahead with a stalled first auction of offshore oil and natural gas rights, ending years of political wrangling as it tries to catch up in a regional race to tap energy wealth in the eastern Mediterranean.

The auction first scheduled for November 2013 was frozen by the government’s failure to pass decrees to demarcate energy blocks, establish production-sharing contracts and specify tender protocols.

Lebanon has lagged behind neighboring Israel, Cyprus and Egypt in developing oil and gas deposits that may lie beneath its share of the Mediterranean Sea. Seismic surveys show the country could hold at least 96 trillion cubic feet of gas and 850 million barrels of oil, then-Energy Minister Gebran Bassil said in a December 2013 interview.

Exxon Mobil Corp. and Total SA are among 46 companies pre-qualified to bid to explore off the country’s coast.

Part of the problem: Lebanon has had no president for more than two years, and government institutions have been paralyzed by political divisions and sporadic violence that have deepened since the war in Syria erupted in 2011.

By the way, Lebanon's public debt is the highest as a share of annual economic output among 22 Arab nations.

But that part about not having a president for two years: perhaps the US could use Lebanon as a model come this November.