"Today, we announce that we have started our petroleum path ... after signing the agreements and launching the exploration activities," he said at a ceremony in the capital Beirut.
Abi Khalil’s remarks came as the Lebanese government announced on Friday it had signed gas exploration and production contracts for two energy blocks, including the disputed Block 9, with consortium of La Belle France's Total, Italian Eniand Russia's Novatek oil and gas companies.
Last December, the cabinet of Prime Minister Saad Hariri
Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if 
Hizbullah...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
has him bumped off, too.
granted licenses to a consortium of the three international companies to carry out exploratory drilling in Leb’s Block 4 and Block 9 territorial waters and determine whether they contain oil and gas reserves.
Israeli officials, who claim illusory sovereignty over Block 9, reacted angrily to the announcement.
"When they issue a tender on a gas field, including Block 9, which by any standard is ours ... this is very, very challenging and provocative conduct here," Israel’s minister of military affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, said at the time.