Beirut,April2, 2019: Under the auspices of the Minister of Energy and Water HE Mrs. Nada Al-Boustani Khoury, the 5th LIOG 2018 summit, organized by “Global Event Partners” and “Planners and Partners”, was launched in Beirut at the Hilton Habtoor Grand Hotel.
The opening ceremony was attended by high-level diplomatic, economic and political personalities, speakers, delegates, sponsors and supporters.
After the Lebanese anthem and the speech of the minister of Energy and water, the networking area was inaugurated, before the sessions began.
On April 3 and 4, the rest of the sessions will resume.
During the opening ceremony, HE Mrs. Nada Boustani Khoury’s speech, was delivered by the Chairman of the Lebanese Petroleum Administration (LPA), Mr. Walid Nasr welcomed all participants. “For the third year, Lebanonis on the verge of witnessing an important milestone in the oil sector in conjunction with this summit,” he said. “I assure you today that Lebanon is still on the right track in exploiting its natural resources and nothing will stop us from achieving our goals.”
He then announced that the Ministry will “Keep on executing the exploration strategy in the blocs 4 and 9, where an environmental survey of the drilling sites has already started. And before the end of 2019, the first exploration drilling will take place in bloc 4. It will be followed by exploration drilling in bloc 9, with the hope of announcing next year, during this summit, the first exploration in the Lebanese sea.”
Nasr added that the Ministry will continue its work towards the completion of the second offshore licensing round, that will be launched soon by the Lebanese Government. “Our ambitions for the oil and gas sector are big but realistic,” he said. “We hope that Lebanon will be transparent through its management to the natural resources, preserving them for the future generations.
To achieve our goal, we should create the appropriate environment to encourage international companies towards investing in Lebanon.
The interest of these companies is not limited only to the offshore exploration sector, but also to the importation of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to procure the power plants. Today, we are in the last stages of the offers evaluation, before we submit the final report to the Government.”
Mr. Nasr concluded, “The Ministry of Energy and Water has signed an oil storage deal with Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft, to develop its storage capacity in Tripoli’s oil installations. All these initiatives and projects aim to create a whole oil sector, capable of providing Lebanon with a self-sufficient energy security, in partnership with international partners.”
Before the speech of Mr. Nasr, Mr. Dory Renno, Managing Director of co-organizers, “Planners and Partners” inaugurated the ceremony by welcoming all guests and explaining the objectives of the summit through the sessions and topics to be discussed with the speakers coming from all over the world to participate in the summit.
The summit continued its sessions discussing “Lebanon industry update, achievements and strategy”, “Market bounce back and its impact on Lebanon”, “The next strategic step – Surface Facilities”. The first day ended with the last session “Starting a national market for natural Gas, the benefits of FSRUs”.
The three-day summit organized around the slogan: ‘A full stream of insights and opportunities’ includes a two day strategic conference, and a technical day, covering the whole value chain of the petroleum industry in Lebanon.
The summit includes nine sessions with subjects related to the promising petroleum sector in Lebanon. The technical day’s discussions will include some important topics like digitalization in the oil and gas sector, and geological and technical advances in the sector and their impact on the Lebanese oil and gas industry.