Beirut requested UN to protect the country’s gas reserves along the maritime border with Israel, after a huge gas field was discovered underneath the Mediterranean Sea.
By Reuters and The Associated Press

A United Nations official said Monday the international body was willing to assist Lebanon demarcate its naval border with Israel to protect the country’s gas reserves.

Baron Michael Williams of Baglan, a diplomat and the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon said Lebanon has every right to benefit from its potential off shore oil and gas resources.

His comments in Beirut Monday followed a request by Lebanon for the UN to protect the country’s gas reserves along the maritime border with Israel, after a huge gas field was discovered off the coast.

The appeal was part of a growing dispute between the two warring countries over natural resources beneath the eastern Mediterranean.

Lebanon has accused Israel of drilling in fields that extend into its waters, an allegation Israel denies. There is no official naval border separating the two countries.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Ali al-Shami said no company should be allowed to operate in waters off the two neighbors, which remain in a formal state of war, until their territorial waters were internationally recognized.

Texas-based Noble Energy and its Israeli partners say they have made the world’s biggest gas discovery of the decade in the Leviathan prospect, 130 km (80 miles) off the Israeli port of Haifa. Another field, Tamar, is due to start production by 2013.

Lebanon, which says that seismic surveys have identified promising quantities of natural gas in its own waters, appealed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week to ensure Israeli exploration did not encroach on its waters.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/un-to-help-lebanon-demarcate-sea-borders-to-protect-gas-reserves-1.336271