Cairn seeks oil and gas off Lebanon

Cairn Energy is looking to explore for oil and gas off the coast of Lebanon as a long-running deal to sell a $6bn (£4bn) stake in its Indian business to Vedanta nears its conclusion.

The oil and gas explorer has teamed up with the Lebanese construction group CCC and Cove Energy to bid for drilling rights there next year. The Levant Basin – between Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus – holds an estimated 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas, making it one of the world's richest deposits.

Cairn, which reported a 134 per cent rise in production to 77,056 barrels a day in the first half of this year, as output from India increased, also said that it plans to expand its exploration programme off Greenland. Its first-half revenues rose to $1.3bn.