BEIRUT – Farid Zeinoun, head of the Syndicate of Workers and Distributors of Gas in Lebanon urged the Energy Ministry to replace old gas bottles with new ones “immediately without any hesitation or delay, in order to preserve public safety and protect the lives of citizens from definite and direct danger,” in a statement issued Tuesday.

Here’s what we know:

    • Zeinoun highlighted “the failure of the Energy Ministry to approve, until today, the replacement of old gas bottles with new ones,” adding that the “replacement process is completely stopped."

    • “All successive energy ministers have dealt with the replacement decision responsibly as old bottles are time bombs in homes and elsewhere,” he said in the statement.

    • According to Zeinoun, there are currently 900,000 old gas bottles in use, which means that companies operating in the gas sector must replace 3.33 bottles for each of the roughly 250,000 tons of domestic gas consumed annually in Lebanon. The annual replacement rate is supposed to be 832,500 bottles, he said.

    • Zeinoun expressed his surprise that “this sensitive file was ignored by Energy Minister Walid Fayyad without any justification to stop the operation, knowing that the money is allocated in the ministry's account, which is currently estimated at LL70 billion.”