Lebanon silent on Syria-Russia energy deal in eastern Mediterranean waters

The Syrian government has signed a new four-year agreement with Russia for energy exploitation in the eastern Mediterranean. The contract between Damascus and Moscow includes maritime areas under Lebanese sovereignty, but the Lebanese government has remained silent on the Syrian-Russian violation of the disputed territory. 

In 2013, the Syrian government signed a contract with Russia for hydrocarbon exploration in the eastern Mediterranean worth 84 million euros, in exchange for Russian intervention in Syria to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The two states reached a nine-year pact, but the Russian company SoyuzNefteGaz ceased operations only two years later.

Syria re-signed this month with Russian company East Med Amrit to resume oil and gas exploration in Mediterranean waters. The contract covers exploitation activities for the next four years. However, the agreement also covers some 750 square kilometres of maritime areas claimed by Lebanon.

The leader of the Lebanese Forces political formation, Samir Geagea, demanded that the Lebanese authorities refer the definition of the maritime borders to the UN and, if the violation of sovereignty by the Al-Asad regime persists, to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Geagea himself denounced Syria's actions and urged President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab to take legal action against the Russian companies.

Beirut defined its maritime borders in 2011 and offered contracts to several companies to boost energy exploration. For its part, Damascus did not recognise Lebanon's ownership of the region, delegitimised its neighbour's sovereignty over the waters and lodged a protest at the international level. A decade later, it is Lebanon that has not reacted to the alleged territorial violation.  

"We expected the violation from the south, from the enemy [Israel], but it came from the north, from a brotherly country," Rola Tabsh, a member of parliament for the Future Movement party, told parliament. The southern border between Lebanon and Israel has been the subject of high tensions. Although Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah denounces Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, specifically a small area known as the Shab'a Farms. 

The UN determined this area to be occupied Syrian land, which provided Hezbollah with an excuse to maintain its conflict with Israel and a justification for retaining armaments, including for the maritime border dispute. However, the Shi'a organisation realised that it would be blamed if it did not allow Lebanon to develop its oil deposits, which is why it allowed negotiations between the two. The resolution of the maritime conflict with Israel remains crucial to Lebanon's ability to attract oil and gas companies to its waters.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-dependent government has been belligerent in its border disputes with Israel. However, it has barely reacted to the Syrian regime's territorial violation. The foreign ministry announced last week that it was preparing a roadmap for negotiations with Syria on maritime border demarcation - an inadequate and ill-timed move.

This double standard responds to the Shi'a organisation's influence over the Lebanese state. Hezbollah is politically active, but also acts as a militia and terrorist organisation. The group has a large security apparatus and builds a network of social services in the country, where the group is often described as a state within the state. Hezbollah is even stronger than the Lebanese army.

Hezbollah's influence would not be possible without Tehran's backing. For this reason, the organisation pursues its own interests rather than those of Lebanon, and owes a debt to the Ayatollahs' regime. The US Treasury Department estimated in 2018 that Iranian funding to its Lebanese partners was around $700 million per year. 

The organisation's power across the country responds to the systemic weakness of Lebanon's institutions. The first point to consider is the deep political instability it has faced since the 1989 Taif agreement that ended the civil war. Power was divided into three parts: one for the Christians, one for the Sunnis and one for the Shiites. Since then, all governments have been fragile. The current government has been in office since the resignation of Hassan Diab in August 2020, days after the explosions in the port of Beirut.

Lebanon's economic collapse has served as a catalyst for this crisis. The current economic reality shows that the Central Bank has lost its ability to stabilise the exchange rate of the local currency, which trades at around 15,000 to the dollar on the market. It has lost 90% of its value since October 2019, and the pandemic has only deepened this dynamic.

In any case, the potential revenues from hydrocarbon exploitation in the waters covered by the agreement could allow Lebanon to put its dire economic situation behind it. This explains the public discontent generated by the diplomatic rudeness and humiliation of war-torn Syria and Russia over waters that Lebanon considers its own. 

The eastern Mediterranean welcomes a new competitor with the arrival of Russia, which is challenging the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF). The EMGF aims to develop a coordinated approach to the extraction of natural reserves off the coasts of Cyprus, Egypt and Israel. Its members aim to involve the private sector and financial institutions to improve the prospects for profitable exploitation of gas reserves.

Egypt, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Italy signed the organisation's founding charter in January 2020, with the United Arab Emirates subsequently joining. Its creation came in response to tension in the eastern Mediterranean over Turkey's exploration for gas in waters it disputes with Cyprus and Greece, for which Ankara is excluded from the negotiations. 

In this respect, Syria's deal with Russia has an important bearing on Turkey's influence in Lebanon, according to The Arab Weekly. Turkey has been the only state to back Beirut in recent months, especially after the strategic abandonment of other Arab countries. Government sources have admitted to the newspaper that they do not rule out that Ankara was aware of Russia's plans in the eastern Mediterranean.