Les commentaires de Mike Azar, qui se présente comme « International and project finance professional », à propos de l’accord sur l’exploitation du gaz entre le Liban et Israël :
▻https://twitter.com/AzarsTweets/status/1580223092630355969
For Lebanon, a maritime boundary deal is better than none. But people need to understand what was agreed because it is being mischaracterized.
For example:
1. The parties did not resolve key economic issues related to hydrocarbon profit-sharing but deferred to a future date
2. Read the passage above. The economic arrangement is vague, open to interpretation, and could lead to disputes.
So the entire deal, including agreement on the actual boundary line, is contingent on future resolution of key unresolved economic issues. It’s fragile.
3. Lebanon’s ability to explore and eventually develop Qana depends on Israeli approvals and a future financial arrangement between Total and Israel — a deal which, despite what the Lebanese Govt would like to think, directly affects Lebanon, but to which Lebanon has no input.
4. That being said, it’s unclear how this theoretical Total-Israel financial arrangement will interact with the existing financial arrangement between Lebanon and Total/ENI — but it has to in some way. The payment(s) would have to come from a share that’d otherwise go to Lebanon
5. But there does not appear to be any clear mechanism currently for Total to be able to net out payments to Israel from the profits/value of the field without amending the EPA with Lebanon. All this still needs to be sorted out. How exactly do the mechanics work?
6. Is Total going to pay a lump sum to Israel or will it make ongoing payments during petroleum activities? What is the formula, what is the payment structure, what recourse do the parties have for non-performance? How does it fit with the current EPA?
7. What if Total walks away from the Concession? What if Total needs to be replaced as Operator? We will not be privy to the deal between Total & Israel, so how will we be able to replace Total? Would anyone even step in given the convoluted nature of this arrangement?
8. These questions are important because they affect the economic value of the field, and the ability to raise money to finance development of Qana. A convoluted structure among parties who don’t talk to each other will make it impossible to finance any development.
9. These issues will be challenging to solve (which is why they were not solved) and such complications will make Qana or any other cross-border reservoir difficult to exploit.
To say nothing of the challenges arising from Lebanon now being a 20% shareholder in Block 9...
10. Natural gas is NOT crude oil. Oil is easy to exploit and bring to market. Gas is a different animal which is why there are so few LNG exporting countries. There are a ton of challenges facing Lebanon in its quest to produce gas unrelated to the maritime boundary.
11. Total is sitting on 75 tcf of recoverable gas reserves in Mozambique (vs. 1.7 tcf maybe in Qana) that is a decade ahead of Lebanon in terms of exploration and development activities (e.g. customers and contracts in place), but it’s all on hold because of country risks.
12. People who think Lebanon is substantially closer today than it was yesterday to becoming a gas exporting country have never developed or financed a gas export project.
People are even talking about SWFs! It takes more than a maritime boundary to justify a gas export project.
13. And unlike other commentators, I don’t see anything in here that suggests Total plans to use existing Karish infrastructure to get Lebanese gas to European markets. The Lebanese Govt would have to approve that development plan. Can’t see that happening.
14. This deal was ultimately much more profitable for Israel. What Lebanon got was avoiding problems it can’t afford to deal with right now. But this deal does not substantially move the needle in terms of Lebanon discovering and exploiting oil and gas reserves.
15. The U.S. has made no real commitment to ensure that petroleum activities commence Lebanon.
Finally, Lebanese Eurobonds did not react at all to the news of the maritime boundary agreement because the market does not expect any positive economic consequence from the deal.
