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Lebanon election uncertainty no risk to oil, gas tenders

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May 10, 2017

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Lebanon's Energy and Water Minister Cesar Abou Khalil speaks during a news conference. (Reuters)

Lebanon’s tender process for offshore exploration and production stalled in 2013 because political deadlock left the country with no president for 2-1/2 years and squabbling between parties prevented the passage of necessary laws. But late last year, a president and prime minister were chosen. A newly formed government restarted the tender process in January by passing two important hydrocarbon decrees and holding a pre-qualification round in April.

Uncertainty reared its head again when President Michel Aoun suspended parliament for a month in mid-April, temporarily blocking plans to extend the assembly’s term with no popular vote for a third time since 2013 to try to push for electoral law reforms and to hold a parliamentary election.
But oil and gas will no longer be subject to political deadlock, the chairman of the board of directors of the Lebanese Petroleum Administration, Wissam Chbat, told the third Lebanon International Oil and Gas Summit in Beirut. “We are decoupled from the political track, there has been a lot of consensus from all political parties towards achieving a successful bid round. Everyone is putting his effort towards achieving that,” Chbat said.

The delay in development has come at a cost, Chbat told Reuters, as oil and gas prices have fallen significantly and east Mediterranean neighbors such as Egypt, Cyprus and Israel have been developing their sectors. “In 2013 we had better dynamics for the industry, better prices for oil and gas and better conditions,” Chbat said. The Lebanese government has estimated with a probability of 50 percent it has 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore, but the true size of the reserves cannot be known until exploration begins. “There is much more than the local market needs and a big portion of it would be for export,” Chbat said. Chbat said 60 targets had been identified as potential reservoirs.

How to Party in Beirut Like It’s Your Last Night on Earth

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May 9, 2017

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Uncategorised

By Nick Marino

When you’re American and you tell people you’re heading to Beirut on vacation, nobody will believe you. “Sure,” they will crack, “Beirut makes a lot more financial sense than North Korea.” Perhaps after a quick Google Maps search to remind themselves where Lebanon actually is, they will inform you that it shares a border with Syria, and that Beirut is but 70 short miles from Damascus.

Here’s the thing: People in the rest of the world have been partying here for ages. In the Middle East, Lebanon is considered a beacon of peace and progressivism. It’s where rich kids from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Gulf buy their luxury goods and blow off steam.

I spent three nights in Beirut this spring, and the only time I ever felt unsafe was when my Uber driver couldn’t figure out his GPS. Yes, the city was once wracked by civil war, but that war ended 27 years ago. Beirut today is a gorgeous place, a picture of cosmopolitanism, with a promenade along the Mediterranean Sea and maybe the best nightlife I’ve ever witnessed. The weather’s balmy. The food’s incredible. You should go. Here’s how to do it.

Guest houses offer a welcoming way of discovering Lebanon

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May 9, 2017

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Uncategorised

By Samar Kadi -Middle-East Online- BEIRUT “Feeling at home” is the idea behind L’Hôte Libanais — the Lebanese Host — 15 guesthouses and boutique hotels carefully selected to give guests genuine insight into traditional Lebanese living.

Nestled in quiet village quarters, centuries-old buildings hidden in the mountains or artsy apartments tucked in the heart of Beirut, the guesthouses are scattered across Lebanon, with each having its own cachet and characteristics. L’Hôte Libanais introduced guesthouses to Lebanon 15 years ago, guided by a belief that “the best way to experience a country is to share its food and to mingle with the local people,” said group founder Orphée Haddad.

“Although the Lebanese people are very hospitable, the tourism industry in Lebanon for years was mainly based on hotels in Beirut, from where tourists would go on day trips to visit historical sites,” Haddad said. “Those who did not know anyone in Lebanon were stuck in places mainly dedicated to tourists and did not have a chance to experience what real Lebanese life is.” The gist of the endeavour is to have the Lebanese people open their houses to foreigners looking to better understand Lebanon and gain first-hand experience of Lebanese hospitality.

“This is how L’Hôte Libanais started. I went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood and from village to village knocking on doors and sharing my idea,” Haddad said. The first guest houses of L’Hôte Libanais started operating in 2005- 06, receiving both foreign guests and the Lebanese who wanted to explore their country. “This is how global travelling is moving now,” Haddad said. “Today people are looking for something more genuine. The old tourism with impersonal large hotels has probably changed into something that is more focused on the experience. It is an experience with the food and the area itself.” L’Hôte Libanais members are carefully selected through strict criteria that combine the physical with the flavour and feel of the place.

Macron to become next French president after beating back Le Pen and her populist tide

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May 7, 2017

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Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte his Wife

By Griff Witte,, James McAuley and Isaac Stanley-Becker May 7 PARIS — France on Sunday shrugged off the siren call of right-wing populism that enchanted voters in the United States and United Kingdom, rejecting anti-E.U. firebrand Marine Le Pen and choosing as its next president Emmanuel Macron, a centrist political neophyte who has pledged to revive both his struggling country and the flailing continent. The result brought to a close a tumultuous and polarized campaign that defied prediction at nearly every turn, though not at the end. Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he appeared to have delivered, with projections issued after polls closed showing him with around 65 percent of the vote. A downcast Le Pen conceded defeat, telling her demoralized supporters in Paris that the country had “chosen continuty.” Meanwhile, a raucous celebration of Macron backers was getting underway outside Paris’s Louvre Museum. The outcome will come as a major relief to Europe’s political establishment, which had feared a Le Pen victory would throw in reverse decades of efforts to forge continental integration. But it instantly puts pressure on Macron to deliver on promises made to an unhappy French electorate, including reform of two institutions notoriously resistant to change: the European Union and the French bureaucracy.

At 39, the trim, blue-eyed and square-jawed Macron will become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon when he is inaugurated this weekend, and his election caps an astonishing rise.

With a background in investment banking and a turn as economy minister under a historically unpopular president, he may have seemed an ill fit for the anti-establishment anger coursing through Western politics.

But by bucking France’s traditional parties and launching his own movement – En Marche, or Onward -- Macron managed to cast himself as the outsider the country needs. And by unapologetically embracing the European Union, immigration and the multicultural tableau of modern France, he positioned himself as the optimistic and progressive antidote to the dark and reactionary vision of Le Pen’s National Front.

Le Pen, 48, has long sought to become the first far-right leader elected in Western Europe’s post-war history. Sunday’s vote frustrated those ambitions, but is unlikely to end them.

By winning around 35 percent of the vote, she nearly doubled the share won by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the 2002 election, the only other time the National Front’s candidate has made it to the second round. The result seemed to cement the party’s long march from the political fringe to the center of the nation’s unhappy political discourse, if not the pinnacle of its power.