Tug Of War Over Oil Revenues

Here’s a quick summary of who stands where on managing the Oil revenues:

While [Minister Gebran] Bassil is demanding the formation of a higher committee headed by President Michel Suleiman to manage the oil sector’s revenues, al-Mustaqbal Movement MPs are calling for the formation of a ministerial committee as the governing body of the sector. Bassil is also insisting on assigning negotiations with oil exploration companies to only one cabinet minister while al-Mustaqbal wants such talks to be headed by a ministerial committee headed by the prime minister.

In other words, it all boils down to who controls the power levers: The (Christian) President or the (Muslim) Prime Minister.

As a purely theoretical matter, there is no dispute that the executive branch of government should be responsible for such matters, but this being Lebanon and the politics being the way they are, I expect a fudge where it’s not not clear who will hold power.